


What is Dark Within Me, Illumine

by aba_daba_do



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence (Gravity Falls), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, a complete nightmare of a story that shatters your expectations at every turn, action sequences, comedic relief, the inevitable future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-01-01 05:38:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 61,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12149778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aba_daba_do/pseuds/aba_daba_do
Summary: Alternate UniverseThings don't go as planned, what ever does? Instead of destroying Bill Cipher the Pines family realize the error in their thinking, when Bill's plan involves turning Dipper into a demon to take his place. Now Dipper and Mabel must navigate their new life together and deal with the complications.





	1. Deal With What You've Got

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4~ months post Transcendence 
> 
> Dipper is not having an easy time being a demon, or at least being scary. So Mabel convinces him to bring her along on a summoning to take notes, but nothing goes as expected.

“WHO DARES SUMMON ALCOR THE DREAMBENDER?”

The summoning tossed waves of blue light across the bedroom, casting high shadows onto the wooden walls and posters of boy bands. The air reeked of candle smoke, burning hair, and pine incense. Sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, Mabel reached into the bowl beside her and popped another sour candy into her mouth. “Still not scary enough, bro.” Munching on her candy she pulled up the sleeves of her sweater, “See? No goosebumps.”

Groaning, Dipper dropped into the circle, sitting cross-legged in the blue glow. It tossed his hair and the back of his black coat around in an imaginary gust of high pressured air conditioning. Resting his chin against his hand, he reached for the candy bowl. “I don’t get it. I used the scary demon voice.” The points of his teeth sliced the candy into ribbons when he bit into it. The candy was just enough to keep him tethered to the physical plane. That was Mabel's idea of course. Candy always made things better in her mind. In Dipper's case, candy only made it a little better. 

Being a demon was not as easy as one would think. Dipper thought the only thing you had to do was show up, say a couple of well-practiced one liners, shake a few hands, and POOF! the deal is done. That’s the way it seemed to work in movies. But it didn’t seem to work that way in real life.

Maybe there was a demon training program he missed out on. Maybe an informational pamphlet? When Bill Cipher caused the Transcendence, thus gracing him with these unwanted powers and throwing the world into supernatural chaos, Dipper sort of felt tossed into the deep end of a pool without knowing how to swim. He had to learn everything step by step about his new life, how summonings worked, conjuring up tiny blue flames in the palm of his hand, even coming up with a new name for himself. (After all, there was power in knowing someone’s true name.) He couldn’t even talk to anyone but Mabel for a while, somehow the events caused her to see straight into the mindscape, winding a small touch of magic into her soul. It wasn’t easy on her either. But if he didn’t have her, he wouldn’t know what to do. 

Dipper huffed out a sigh. He still had a hard time putting this whole Transcendence thing together. Why would Bill do this? Who dies and then gives their worst enemy ultimate power? Maybe it was because Dipper was turning out to be a crumby demon. Bill would find it very funny. Maybe that's why he did it? 

Being a demon was all performance art--and Dipper never considered himself much of an actor. But Mabel considered herself an expert actress, and she took it upon herself to coach him. It was like she said, “I’m your twin sister. If you can scare me, you can scare anyone.”

“What am I doing wrong?” he grumbled.

“Dunno,” she shrugged. “I guess you’re just acting a little too much like yourself!”

“I am myself! I don’t think I can change that!”

“Okay, okay. What I mean to say is you’re trying too hard. I see Dipper pretending to be Alcor. Just be Alcor. You gotta sell me on the whole ‘I’m a scary demon who wants to eat your soul’ thing.”

He tossed his arms into the air. “I am a scary demon! I have gold and black eyes and wings! I mean, I don’t want to eat anybody’s soul. That seems a little gross and unnecessary. Maybe I don’t want to be a scary demon. Maybe I’d rather just be a friendly demon and do favors for people and fight bad guys.” Flopping back onto the summoning circle, the light illuminated the features from his human life that remained, the soft tufts of his brown hair and the Big Dipper birthmark on his forehead. “Maybe I don’t want to be a demon at all! But does anybody care what I want? Nope!”

Mabel patted the top of his head. “I know it's not easy, Dip. But this is how things are now and we’ve got to deal with what we’ve got.”

Beneath him the pentagram pulsed 3 times, a static hum emanating from it. “Uhhhhggg,” he groaned again.

“What?”

“Someone is summoning me-- I'm getting some negative vibes from it." (There's 7 summoners- more than you've ever dealt with before. The energy radiating from their intention is malevolent, clawing at skin and demanding blood.) "Can I let it go to voicemail? Does that even exist? Demon voicemail.” Ignoring summoning was hard. It was almost like an instinct, akin to ignoring hunger. But he absolutely despised it. Apparently, Bill's old summoning circle still worked on him, and Dipper kept getting wound up with all the wrong people. 

She shook his shoulder, practically leaning into him. “No! Don’t you see? This is the perfect opportunity to practice! You gotta get some real-world experience. I can go with you and take notes!”

“Are you sure? The people who summon demons aren’t the type of crowd you wanna be hanging out with, Mabel. They’re usually guys who live in basements and summon me to prove something about themselves, or people who only want power and actually think I’m gonna give it to them. They’re honestly creepier than I am.”

“That’s not a very high standard for creepy. Come on, let’s go!” She tugged on his sleeve, trying to urge him off the floor.

“Fine. If you say so, but as the record stands, I wanted it to go to voicemail--any weird thing that happens is on you.” Rising off the ground, he stretched out his wings and extended a hand to his sister. “Try to be careful. I’m still working on this teleportation thing and I’d prefer it if you didn’t barf on me this time. It wouldn’t help my image.”

She grabbed her backpack and “emergency baseball bat” covered with glitter (the grappling hook wasn’t enough for her anymore), dragging it into the pentagram with her. “You got it, bro-bro! Now beam us up!”

“Right.” His fingers dug into the back of her sweater, her hair flying up around her in the wind of the pentagram. The light around them burned into thick flames, the twins disappearing from the bedroom.

 

\------

 

As always, the summoning took place in a basement. What did people have against taking their demonic activities outside in the sunlight? If you wanted a demon to like you, it was best not to coop them up in a dark room.

This was, for the most part, like every other summoning Dipper had been through (5, if you excluded all the times Mabel had to summon him just so he could talk to someone). It was dark except for the glow of the summoning circle. The air was cold and smelt like mildew. The brown walls were carved with strange symbols and covered with red drapes. And were those… pipes overhead. This all felt familiar.

No matter. He gave his back and wings a stretch. Mabel was right. He had to stop pretending, he had to be confident in himself. This was who he was now. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Floating above the summoning circle he reached out at his summoners, all wearing long red cloaks like some kind of cult. Great… “WHO DARES SUMMON ALCOR THE--”

Mabel coughed, leaning over a pot in the back of the room. She spit into it, wiping at her mouth. Her face looked pale with dribbles of sweat coming down. “I threw up. I'm sorry, bro-bro.”

He shook his head, covering his eyes with embarrassment. “Why did I even agree to bring you?”

She spit into the pot one more time and staggered to her feet. “Uhg. Maybe I shouldn't have eaten all that sour candy before teleporting.”

“That’s it,” Dipper sighed, “get back in the circle. I'm taking you home.”

“What,” one of the men in red robes stepped forward, only his frown visible from beneath his hood, “is going on here?”

“Right, right,” Dipper said as Mabel stumbled into the circle. He cleared his throat, “I’m Alcor the Dreambender. Who dares summon me? Blah blah. Can we make this quick? As you can see I'm busy.”

The figures in red robes whispered to each other, their hoods covering their faces. Stitched into each hood was a crossed out eye, definitely familiar. But where would Dipper have seen them before? They whispered his name over and over, like he was some kind of oddity. Well, he was, but they summoned him. They should have known that.

“Can we move this along,” he urged. “Seriously,” Dipper said, “who are you guys?”

He waved one hand in front of his face. “We are the The Society of the Blind Eye.”

Dipper and Mabel looked at each other, blinked a few times and then laughed.

“These guys again? For a moment I was worried it would be something serious, like a demon worshiping cult or something.” Dipper clutched to Mabel’s shoulder as she nearly doubled over.

“Come on,” Mabel wheezed for breath as she laughed. “You guys wouldn’t stand a chance against us. Give it up. What prank show is this?”  

“Do you mock our institution?”

“Sorry,” Dipper tried not to crack a shark-tooth smile, but it didn’t work. “So what is it you guys want, huh? Knowledge? Power? New bath robes?” Mabel snorted and pressed her face into his arm.

“Enjoy your laughter while you can. All we desire,” one of the red robed society members presented the leader with a box, from within he pulled a strange looking gun with a dial and a light bulb on one end, “is to see you completely destroyed. The Transcendence has disrupted the blissful routines of life. It is our job to protect those who do not wish to see, and that starts with removing the two of you: Dipper and Mabel Pines.”

That was impossible. No one beyond friends and family should know who he was. That was the whole point of taking a stupid name like Alcor. And how did they even know about Mabel? He thought they erased the memories of all the Blind Eye members when they raided the History Museum over the summer. No one should even remember what happened. There shouldn’t even be a society left.

“Confused?”

“Yeah. Lil’ bit,” Mabel confessed.

“The Society of the Blind Eye has many chapters--protecting cities that are most at risk from the supernatural. When our fellow chapter was disbanded, we retrieved the memory tube used to clear their minds that you so casually left behind. After that it was more than easy to track it down to the visiting Pines twins and all the trouble you caused. So when word spread of this Transcendence, of a demon from Gravity Falls and the girl he kept so near, we knew it must have been you.”

“Yeah, that would do it,” Mabel muttered.

“I can't believe we were so stupid,” Dipper groaned. “Leaving the memory tube behind. We should have destroyed it.”

“Your childish mistake will be your last,” the leader held out the memory gun, pointing it between Dipper’s eyes. “Prepare to be unseen.”  

Grabbing Mabel by the wrist, Dipper yanked her down to the ground in the fading light of the summoning circle, trying to shelter her from the ray. “Time to go!”

“We can’t just let these guys get away,” she whispered. “They have a memory eraser ray. They’re gonna use it on innocent people. Or..."

“I can deal with that on my own. You need to go home.”

Her fingers dug into his sleeve, “Dip! It’s a memory eraser ray! What if it…” she didn’t get to finish her sentence.

The pale light of the ray fired again, not hitting Mabel but slicing against Dipper’s shoulder. He winced, the sting somehow racing through his incorporeal body. He traced his fingers across it, golden ichor dripping from the wound and his body, dissolving as if made of smoke. It would heal eventually, he knew it would, though slowly. But that wasn’t the point, it was that he wasn’t as invincible as he originally thought.

So this was what Mabel was trying to tell him. It all made sense. The memory eraser ray is what they used to destroy-- or thought destroyed-- Bill. Whatever his body was made of, it wasn’t flesh or bone, it was something metaphysical, the same stuff as dreams and memories.

“Dip!” Mabel screamed. She pushed herself off the ground, trying to assess how bad the damage was. One of the Blind Eye members grabbed her by the waist, hoisting her still tiny body off the ground while she kicked and squirmed, trying to reach for the baseball bat on the floor.

The leader still angled the ray at Dipper, gaze unfaltering beneath the hood. “Still yourself, Dreambender. We have the upperhand. You are but a child, even with all your power you are still naive and weak. Accept your fate, or the price will be taken from your sister’s memories.”

“Don’t you dare hurt Mabel,” he snarled back. The ray fired again, this time shooting the light into Dipper’s back, across the ridges of his spine, more of his body deteriorating away.

Mabel continued to claw and kick at the red robed member holding her hostage. “Dipper!”

He tried not to scream. Scary demons don’t scream. But a whimper escaped from his throat anyway. He couldn’t help it. It hurt … but it also felt kind of  good. The pain was almost delightful; after months of being completely unreal, it felt as if he had skin and nerve endings again. Like jumping into ice cold water. He leaned back on his knees and the front of his feet, clutching to his shoulder, ignoring the sting his spine. It was like being pinched awake. “You know,” he mumbled. And then he grinned, much too wide and all with pointed teeth, a Jekyll and Hyde switch. “Pain is hilarious. AND I THINK YOU SHOULD SHARE IN THE FUN.”   

Mabel’s face drained of color when he flew upwards, summoning full sparks of blue fire into his palms, watching them rage across any space they could find as if they had a mind on their own. Goosebumps bloomed on her arms and made her body run cold. The Blind Eye all stood still in fear and awe, mouths agape beneath their hoods. Mabel’s shock slipped into a sly smile, “I think you’re right, bro. Sharing is caring.” She dug her fingernails into the bare hand of her captor, drawing four slices of blood. He screamed, dropping her to the ground, allowing her just enough time to grab her baseball bat and stand at Dipper’s side. “Alcor.” She tapped the bat against her hand, once, twice, a menacing pattern. “Let's teach them a lesson about messing with the mystery twins.”

The raging blue light tossed across the twins faces, illuminating what was dark within them. “WITH PLEASURE.”

Mabel went first, more impulsive and buzzing with adrenaline. Reeling back her baseball bat, she slammed it into the gut of the Blind Eye leader. She reached up, trying to wrestle the ray from his hands, knowing that she would never win in strength. But it wasn’t about getting the memory eraser ray. It was about providing a distraction, so Dipper could take down the rest of the members.

He raised one hand and summoned shadows from the corners, behind pillars. He didn't even know he could do that, but now wasn't the time to question these things. They moved like ink in the water, sentient spirals that twisted their way across the floor and across the walls. They gripped to ankles and crawled up legs, latching onto wrists; dragging the red robes down to the concert blocked floor. Some of their hoods fell off, revealing faces with mouths open in horror-- triggering his omnipotence to urge names and backstories into his mind. (Nancy, mother of two, just wants to put dinner on the table, but has a hard time getting by without thinking of her rotten ex.) (Jahmeek, always been afraid of things that go bump in the night.) (Max, has been couch hoping for far too long and needed a place to go.) (Chi, used to drink to forget and now she doesn’t have to.)

So many things he never wanted or needed to know and now he did. All the effort it took just to fight off his own mind. Ignore the omniscience, deal with the bad guys.

Dipper urged the shadows closer, dragging the members closer to his grasp. The leader dropped the memory ray while the shadows curled around his body, pinning him down. With his other hand, Dipper motioned for the shadows to bring him the ray. He snatched at it with one clawed hand. The shadows squeezed tighter to The Society of the Blind Eye, as Dipper glowered at them. Mabel rushed to his side, still gripping to the baseball bat until her knuckles turned white and the glitter rubbed off onto her palms.

“Please, spare us,” the leader pleaded. “You may punish us for our transgressions but we beg you not to destroy us.”

Dipper blinked. “What do you guys seriously think I’m gonna eat your souls or something?” The Blind Eye looked at each other. He sighed, and let the shadows around them loosen just enough to let them breathe. “Listen, I know you’re scared about the new world and all of this crazy magic stuff going on. But no one is more scared than me. You said it yourself, I’m just a weak, naive kid. I’m a product of the weirdness just like everything else--I didn’t cause the Transcendence. But this is just how it is. I’ve got to learn to deal with all of this demon stuff, and you have to deal with it without erasing people’s memories or trying to kill me. Trust me, I personally know the guy who invented these. And it drove him insane for 30 years. Don’t make the same mistakes.”

“So you won’t do anything to us?”

Dipper shook his head. “No. I don't want to hurt people." He sighed and handed the memory eraser ray to Mabel, the memory reel playing of the first time they saw one, how gingerly he first held the golden frame. Things had certainly changed. "But she will.”

Mabel plugged the words onto the screen: DIPPER AND MABEL PINES. She held it up to her eye and angled the light bulb sealed to the front. “Say cheese.” The members screamed and begged. She pulled the trigger.

 

\------

 

Teleporting back into the attic bedroom, Dipper paused as Mabel clutched in preparation to her stomach. She held still a moment. “Hey! I didn’t throw up this time! I'm getting pretty good at this!” Then she nudged his arm with her elbow, “And what the hey-hey! You were really scary back there! I thought you were gonna tear off their faces or something.”

He laughed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Yeah. Something just came over me I guess. How angry and worried I was.” Or maybe it was the pain--though he hoped it really was concern for Mabel. He lowered himself down onto the ground, sitting cross-legged on the old, musty wooden floors. He rubbed at his shoulder, most of it seeming to have healed or at least reappeared… he wasn’t quite sure how this not real but still somehow real body worked-- why did his omniscience only apply to useless things?

“It was awesome! You even reminded me a little bit of,” she stopped and bit her lip, eyes tearing away from Dipper.

“Bill?”

“Yeah.” She sighed and plopped down beside him. “Don’t think about it like that though. You’re a thousand times better than Bill. He wouldn’t have hesitated to kill those guys, but you let them go. You may have inherited Bill’s powers, but that doesn’t make you him. You act too much like yourself to be Bill. I like Dipper, and I also like Dipper pretending to be Alcor--despite his scary exterior he’s a pretty good guy.”

He smiled and flushed a bright shade of pink, “Thanks.”

“Now,” she tapped her finger against the bottom of her lip, “what to do with this?” She held up the memory eraser ray, the blue light of the summoning circle casting odd shadows onto it. Dipper could see his distorted reflection in the gold exterior, the fingerprints that smudged its sides.

His mind raced through the possibilities, every use that the ray could possibly have. (It could be Mabel’s saving grace, a device that would allow her to hide their family’s greatest secret. Something to protect her from great evils. It could even get the cops off of Stan’s case. But it could also kill him, if that’s what he truly wanted. Or it could erase all of her memories. And even with all his knowledge, he was never sure if such a day would come. But if it meant protecting Mabel...

“Why don't you hold on to it for safe keeping?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so if you've read this fic before, you might notice some differences. That's because what started off as a one shot is now a fully fledged story-- so I have to continually make edits to progress with a proper plot line (what ever it may be-- much like Alcor I am plagued by the knowledge of infinite outcomes).


	2. Do Demons Dream of Nightmare Sheep?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5~ months post transcendence
> 
> Dipper struggles to get a handle on his omnipotence and Mabel suggests he try sleeping it off (like she does with all her problems). But there's one question: do demons even dream?

The summoning circle flared to life on the bedroom floor, a swell of blue light and a static hum of energy, Dipper and Mabel materializing inside. Mabel crashed to the floor, a groan escaping her throat. “Uhhhg. I’m so tired.” She rolled onto her back to stare at Dipper, blowing the hair out of her face and eyes. “Man, that was nuts and berries.”

 

 

Dipper resorted to hovering cross-legged in the air. “I wasn’t expecting the giant beetle to be some kind of eldritch monster come to punish humans and return to the upperworld. Sorry I dragged you into that.”

“Pfft.” Mabel pushed herself up off the floor, her breath rolling in heavy and painful puffs. “Please, you needed me. That thing was resistant to all magic, it would have eventually eaten you. But it wasn’t Mabel-resistant!” She swung her arms like she was holding her baseball bat, “Wapow!” Her arms flopped back down beside her, a low thunk on the floor. “And how could you not know the beetle was a monster? I thought you knew everything. That it was some super power or whatever.”

“I do-- or I can. I don’t know. I really tried this time. I wanted to know what the beetle was, where it was from, what I could do to defeat it. Though I guess I couldn't defeat it anyway. But when I tried to find out all I got was a garbled feed of stuff--like TV static. I only seem to know things when I really don’t want or need to know them. If there is information I really need, I can’t seem to grasp it.” It was like dandelion fluff in the wind, it always blows into your face when you least expect it. But when you wanted to catch the individual tufts, you never could. Maybe he wasn’t a dream demon after all. Maybe he was a demon of useless and inopportune information. So if you ever wanted to know exactly how many raindrops were in a puddle or how many people actually liked the band _Dimeback_ (they have 17 million likes on their Instabook page), he was your guy. 

Mabel rose up off the floor, stretching out her arms and the muscles in her back. She pried off her shoes at the heel, kicking them across the room. “Whatever. It's the middle of the night. I’m going to bed. You should try to get some rest too. Might help you sort out all this omni-chance stuff. I know sleeping off my problems always helps.”

“First, it’s omniscience. Second, demons don’t sleep, Mabel.” Or at least, demons didn't need to sleep. Since it happened, he never felt the need to sleep weigh on his eyelids. Sure, he felt  _tired_ occasionally, but sleep didn't feel natural. He spent most nights stuck in his own head, thrashing against his own thoughts. The ability to pull himself down into sleep seemed like wishful thinking. He felt constantly on afraid of it, that if he ever allowed himself a moment to rest something bad would happen again. 

“Well,” she crawled into bed, not even bothering to change out of her clothes, “have you ever tried it?” She pulled the covers up and around her neck and shoulders, her head nuzzling a dent into the pillow.

Dipper bit one shark tooth into his lip. “No. But what would be the point? I probably wouldn’t even dream.”

“Sure you could. You’re Alcor the Dreambender, emphasis on dream. All this stuff is your domain isn’t it? If anyone can do it, you can. Besides, you aren’t like other demons. Some part of you _is_ still human. I can feel it. You just gotta tap into that.”

“I don’t know. Dreaming is all about having a mindscape. I don’t have one because I literally live there. If I did dream, I don’t think it would be any different from my usual day. And, to be honest, I don’t think I remember how to sleep.” 

“Sure you do! You’re just out of practice. Let’s have a sleep over! Come lie down.” Dipper didn’t budge. “Come on, bro! Do it for me!” she whined, though exhaustion made her voice falter and mumble.

“Fine.” He flew over to the bedside and floated on his back, as if drifting through a swimming pool.

Mabel watched him through the hole in her blanket cavern. “Good. Now just focus on your breathing.”

“Another thing I don’t do.”

“Just fake it. Or meditate or something. List the infinite set of numbers between 0 and 1. I don't know. Whatever you do to relax.”

Relax? It’s kind of hard to relax when you’re adjusting to having near-infinite power. Meditation didn’t seem like a bad idea. It wouldn’t hurt for him to be a little more grounded. And he was definitely stressed, like 24/7 worried or thinking about something, especially since his brain could think much faster than what he was used to. He had to learn to control his thoughts and anxiety.

“Okay,” he replied. But when he looked over Mabel was already asleep, her breath making the hair around her face fly around. The hum of her dreams was soft, like a radiator in an old house.

He closed his eyes and tried to tune out the hyper-sensitivity; the creak of the house, the droning Shepard’s tone of the mindscape, the thousands of thoughts trying to race through his mind at once. Nope, ignoring all of that. Focusing on mindfulness.

He sucked in a fake breath, held it for five seconds, let it go for ten. Repeat that indefinitely.

He tried to think about his body (the metaphysical representation of a body), trying to imagine it turning to static. Nothing else mattered. Five seconds in. Ten seconds out. He listened more closely to the hum of Mabel's dreams, trying to curl within their safety. Following each of her breaths. Five seconds in. Ten seconds out. Five seconds in. Ten seconds…

 

\-----

 

He found himself lying in a pasture of soft green, synthetic like plastic Easter grass. The sky looked like the color of Mabel’s favorite blue crayon, the one when she was 5 that she colored down to the nub. The clouds pooled into thick whipped cream shapes clumps, oozing across the open air. The place smelt like the inside of a supermarket freezer. How strange. He didn't remember being summoned? Or teleporting? 

A sheep with fleece like galaxies only seen through powerful telescopes blinked 2 beady eyes at him, chewing on something that looked like shadows and broken snowglobes. It stood over him, hooves planted at his sides. _“What is this?”_ Dipper heard its voice in his head, echoing across his skull.

_“A child. Oh how wonderful!”_ said another, turning its head with curiosity. Dipper's vision sharpened, and he suddenly became aware of how close the sheep were to his face.

_“A child? What is a child doing here?”_ said the first. 

_“He is strange, very strange,”_  replied the second. It leaned his and sniffed his hair with a puff of hot air.  _“He smells familiar. Like socks that have been put through the wash. Clean and fresh.”_ Their bodies radiated something akin to the heat death of the universe, but yet the contact felt soft like blankets. 

_“It smells human. Do you think it’s dead?”_

The second shook its head. _“He can't be human. Look at those eyes, those wings. You know who he is. He is… he is…”_  Dipper sat upright, realizing he hadn't yet moved, nearly knocking heads with one of the sheep.  _“See? He’s not dead.”_

_"Shame. I liked him better dead."_

He surveyed his surroundings, the grass and sky running endlessly, though only the two sheep stood in his presence. His clawed fingers gripped into the grass. “Where am I? Why am I talking to sheep? Am I supposed to be counting you or something?”

_“Pfft. Sheep. You hear him call us sheep?”_ said the first.

_“We look like sheep. Easy mistake,"_ replied the second. 

“No…” Dipper leaned forward, pointing at the sheep. A memory flooded his thoughts like adding a drop of food coloring to water. They felt awfully familiar. Not in the way that you remember someone you went to middle school with years later, or even a story you heard once before. No, this was more like finding something you thought you had lost, an artifact of yourself. “I know you. You’re a flock of nightmares. Weird. I always thought you would have been horses. You know, night- _mares_?”

The first sheep scoffed at him. _“Ahh, so it thinks it’s funny. A real wise-cracker.”_

“Listen, all I need are answers," Dipper bargained. "Mostly about how to get out of here. I’m supposed to be sleeping back home, not talking to nightmare sheep.”

_“I’m afraid you already know the answer to that, little one. Why don’t you try again? Hmm? Close your eyes.”_

**“** I don’t see the benefit in that,” he crossed his arms like a stubborn child. 

The second nightmare prodded him with its nose, trying to force him to lie down in the grass. _“You don’t see a lot of things. But I think in time you will figure it out."_

 Dipper groaned. “Seriously. I'm lost. Could you give me directions or something?”

  _“I am directing you to close your eyes and try again. You'll get to where you need to go. I''ll help you, but first you need to lie down.”_

“Alright.” He laid back down into the grass, staring up at the sky. Now he was taking advice from nightmare sheep. But it was the only advice he had. The second nightmare nudged his face with its nose, and licked one of his cheeks, his skin tingling where they met. It was somewhat comforting and familiar as the nightmare curled up beside him.

_“Relax and try again. You’ll figure it all out eventually. It might be a little confusing at first, but I think you will manage. Close your eyes.”_ He did so, the grass acting as a cocoon around him. His fingers wove into the galaxy wool of the nightmare beside him. Even the first nightmare plopped down by his head, albeit with a sense of defiance. 

Dipper felt himself drift off again...  

\------

 

The next was a woman with three faces. She stood, the portal in the Mystery Shack basement roaring to life behind her in a swirl of hypnotic colors. Her three arms and fifteen fingers performed an intricate game of cat’s cradle with red string. And each of her faces were Mabel.

“Yesterday is gone,” said the left head with wide eyes and pink cheeks. A memory of the tree swing in the front yard of his parents home formed in the strings of the cat’s cradle game. Fall had just begun to turn over the trees, the twins were only six then, and Dipper had fallen off of the swing and broken his arm. He could feel the bruises forming under his skin. He wailed, a full on sniffling and snotty cry. Mabel cradled him close, yelling for their mom and trying to kiss the boo-boo away, but this was bigger than a bandaid. Her pigtails and slap bracelets tickled his skin on impact.

Dipper blinked the memory out of his eyes. The lingering pain and cracked bone ached under his arm.

“Today still lingers like bonfire smoke on clothes,” said the middle head, her features looked refined and sharp at the edges. She held up the cradle, Mabel resting in her bed with the covers pulled around her head. Her breath came in slow puffs and the air smelt like laundry detergent.

The third head looked at him, except her face could not seem to stay, sometimes there and sometimes gone. “Tomorrow is no guarantee.” What she showed made little sense. But it was of memories that had not yet been formed. One of Dipper carrying boxes into the back of her car. In another, she and Stan sat fishing on the lake, just the two of them not saying anything. One where he presses her cracked and withered knuckles to his lips. One where she pecks an unfamiliar boy on the cheeks and smiles-- he is familiar somehow. One where she sits beside him in an open green field with her head on his shoulder while the wind tossed her hair. One where gold fire sparks from her fingers and she laughs as if learning a new trick.

Dipper took a step back, his foot getting caught in something black and gooey like tar. He tried to yank himself free but only felt the pitch crawl further up his leg. It smelled like rotting flesh and felt like lead weights dangling from his limbs. It continued to climb, winding across his waist and chest. It squeezed its way around his neck and locking his fingers. “What are you trying to tell me?” The tar crawled further up and around his neck and shoulders, binding him together in the sticky mess.

The three heads looked at him all at once, “They’re your memories, bro-bro. I thought you knew everything?" 

The tar swallowed him.

 

\------

Dipper saw himself, underneath the pit of tar and caught in the blackness. His usual self. His  _real_ self. 12 years old and wearing a silly hat and vest. Caught in a bubble, floating aimlessly in the nothing. The real Dipper pressed his hands against the curve of the bubble, his palms turned flat and white where he met the glass. “L'p lq khuh! Ohw ph rxw!”

The other Dipper stepped back, swimming in the sticky sea of pitch. “What?”

“Gr brx nqrz zkb kh glg wklv wr xv? The other Dipper’s voice sounded like he was under water, rippling over the air.

“I don't understand!” He yelled back. How could he not understand? What did this even mean?

“Sohdvh! Ohw ph rxw! Iru wklv guhdp kdwk qr erwwrp!” the other self screamed, voice shredded with agony and terror. 

Dipper reached up to the bubble, “Please, I don’t understand.” His claws scratched against the glass, high-pitched slices trailing down it. “What are you saying?”

“Khos! Ohw ph rxw.”  

Dipper banged his hands against the bubble, desperate. Hot golden tears streamed down his cheeks and filled up his throat until speaking felt like choking. “I don’t understand!" 

"zkb glg kh gr wklv wr xv? brx qhhg wr iljxuh lw rxw! grq'w ohw frqwuro brx!" 

The tar surrounded them, changing its shape, stretching and clumping around them. It formed into a great mass, a stone triangle, with the bubble caught in the center of the eye, and one hand outstretched in a deal. Dipper slashed at it, trying to pry his other self from it. “It’s okay! I got you!" His fingers slipped uselessly against the shell of the bubble, like rain across a window. He was unable to use his powers, no matter what he did nothing would happen. He banged his hands against it, slowly losing the strength to keep going as the tears clogged up his eyes and mouth. He was useless to save himself. 

His other self stared with big brown eyes. “Gr brx?” The bubble enveloped itself in the blackness.

 

\----

He woke up, gasping for the breath he didn’t need. “What was that,” he muttered to himself, staring at the wooden beams and mold spots on the ceiling. He couldn’t even begin to pinpoint his experience. Was he in another dimension? Trapped in someone’s mindscape? Was everything from the past few months just a fever dream? (Nope. Sorry.) 

_I think I can explain._

He turned to face the noise. "Ah!" The old woman with the turtle skull for a head wearing an electric green Hawaiian shirt sat in the empty attic of the Mystery Shack. It was devoid of the beds, the shelves, the painting of a ship at sea. Mabel was nowhere. Even the smell of mildew was replaced with a very distinct nothing. It made his mouth taste like air and sawdust. A small round table with a doily garnished the empty wood floors.

_Come, sit._ Said the old woman with the turtle skull for a head. An empty chair appeared across from her. She tapped one finger on the edge of the table, creating an array of plates and cups and cake all stacked comically on each other.  _I’ve just made a lovely pineapple upside down cake. You must have a slice while you are here._

Dipper did as she asked, pulling out the chair and sitting with his hands on his knees. He was in no position to be questioning strange old women with strange animal skulls for heads. “Listen, ma’am. I’m a little confused. I don’t know where I am or what’s going on.”

_You are dreaming. You ought to know that, Dreambender._ She sliced into the cake and laid the piece delicately onto a white china plate. It was a perfect slice, no crumbs fell off and all the pineapple topping stayed together in one clump.

“But I can’t--”

_Shhh. Eat your cake._ She placed it before him with a silver fork.  _I hear you have a bit of a sweet tooth these days._ Somehow, without moving, her skull could grin.

He dug his fork into it, the prongs clinking against the china plate. pulled off a chunk and took a bite. It really was lovely. Possibly the best thing he ever tasted, no, it was the best. The soft cake mixed with the sweet bite of the pineapple glaze. He swallowed, and dug into the cake again. He didn't even think he could be hungry anymore, but now he realized he definitely was. “Who are you?”

_I am the old woman with the turtle skull for a head. Whom else would I be?_

“Are you a demon? A god?” He crammed another bite of cake into his mouth.

_No, no. Nothing so fancy like that._ She made a can of Pitt Cola appear on the table before he realized he desired it.

“Then what are you?” He popped the tab open, a satisfying hiss escaping into the air, and took a sip.

_The question you should be asking is: what are you?_

“I’m a,” he paused, pushing his cake around on his plate. “I’m a demon, I suppose.”

_You suppose?_

“Yes… though I might be something else. This is all very confusing, so can you please help me instead of asking more questions?”

_Who is to say I am not helping?_

“I am!” He slammed his fork down on the table, blue flames spurting out of his hands but not burning the table or the doily. “So far everything I’ve seen has been part of some Wonderland, down the rabbit-hole weirdness. I’m supposed to know everything. So why is everything so confusing?”

The old woman with the turtle skull for a head pondered this before responding. Everything _you see is truth, young one._ The old woman with the turtle skull for a head looked only at her electric green shirt.  _Why do you think you struggle with your omniscience, hmm?_ Dipper said nothing, instead sinking his teeth into his bottom lip.  _It is because truth is not a solid object. It shifts and changes with the tide. There is no end of the rabbit-hole, as you put it. You expect to reach into the barrel, pull out a fish, and eat it. But instead you sometimes get eels or elephants._

He slumped back down in his chair. “You’ve lost me.”

She chuckled, and Dipper liked the sound of her voice. She was the only new thing in his world that felt safe. _My dear, the truth is always changing. The future is not set in stone, it takes arcs and bends much like the branches of an old tree. It creates a multiverse of possibilities. Accept what comes your way. If you follow the branches of a tree, you will eventually see it has come to bear fruit all on its own. You are still so young, and you have so much to learn. Omniscience will not come easily for you, but it will come on its own time._

He thought to himself about it. “So… the trick to my omniscience is just to accept whatever I get? Stop looking for specific answers and realize there might be many answers, or no answer at all. Then I’ll be able to use it when I want and figure out what I need to know?”  

_Right on the dot._

“Why didn’t I figure that out on my own?” He sighed and reached for his fork again. At least cake still made sense in his crazy world.  

_Dipper, do you know why you are here?_

He spoke between bites. “Uhm. So you could teach me a lesson?”

_No. Because you are dreaming. This is your omniscience, the inner workings of consciousness. Demons do not dream. But you do. You are very special. Something peculiar happened to you that made you what you are. Some part of you is a demon, new and powerful. But some part of you is still very human, your sister was right about that, and it will guide you to many miraculous things._

"Do you," he wrapped one hand around the can of Pitt Cola. Cool condensation dripped down the sides and onto his hand. He wasn't sure if he wanted to ask this question, but who else would know? "Do you know why I'm like this? Why Bill did this to me?" 

She frowned, well she didn't actually frown but Dipper could tell she was frowning.  _I'm afraid not, my dear. That truth eludes me._

A swell of sadness rose up in him, pushing at the cavity in his chest. But he would just have to keep looking for his answer. He rose from his seat and bowed to her. “Thank you. For the cake and the clarity.” He went to leave, but turned around. “...Are you supposed to be the representation of my subconscious or something?”

_No. I am the old woman with the turtle skull for a head._

“Oh. Alright then, I guess I should be going. Mabel is going to wake up in,” he paused, letting the answers come to him, “97 seconds.”

_Go. If you should need me again, you know where to find me._

 

\------

Dipper woke up exactly 72 seconds before Mabel, enough time to yawn and stretch. He didn’t need to do those things. He just wanted to. The sun hovered through the triangle window, like an all-seeing eye. It rose at exactly 6:58 that morning. Particles of dust floated through the crisp sunlight. The bedroom had returned to normal. Correction--it never left and neither did he. It was all a dream. 

Mabel rustled in bed. Her bleary eyes blinked for times, revealing the tired redness of the whites. She groaned, and rolled onto her stomach to stare at him. She smiled between chapped lips and behind strands of clumped hair.

“I know you’re going to ask,” Dipper said before she could. He crossed his legs, hovering 4 feet in the air surrounded by a static hum. “And you were right.”

“I am always right,” her voice croaked when she spoke. “But right about what?”

“Dreaming,” he said with a sigh. “Contrary to popular belief. I can. And you were also right. Sleeping off my problems was surprisingly helpful.” He felt relaxed in a familiar way that reminded him of waking up on Sunday mornings, into the late morning, with the sunlight creeping through his window. 

She pumped on lazy fist in the air, letting it fall back down before it was even fully up. “Wapow! The power of Mabel!” The blankets nuzzled back around her, cushioning her arms. “So… what did you dream of?”

He smiled slyly, looking at her through the corner of his black and gold eyes. “Destruction and chaos. I dreamed about taking over the mortal realm and making it my own nightmare realm where I can exist as I please and punish all who commit sins against my will." 

“Huh?” Her brown eyes turned were the size of silver dollars.

He laughed. “I’m kidding. Why would I dream something like that? The dream was all very nonsensical. But it had sheep, you would have liked that. They had galaxies for wool. And I knew them, I guess. They were familiar. They said we would meet again.”

She laughed, a wakefulness rising in her voice. “Haha. That’s awesome! Was I in your dream?”

He remembered the 3 faced woman, the memories of Mabel that did and did not exist. Something about her past, her present, and her future. He tried to follow the branches of that tree. But he couldn’t nail down her future. The branches kept intertwining and looping back around into each other. He swallowed the uneasiness.

He shook his head. “Sorry, Mabes. Not this time.”

“Well next time, dream me up with your sheep. No! Put the sheep in my dreams, okay?”

He could barely focus on her. He kept worrying 2 more faces would show up. Something else was going on here. "Sure thing." 


	3. Fear Itself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 10~ months post Transcendence.
> 
> Dipper is still learning how his new powers work and needs a little help from his family to make sense of it all. However, they don't always give the best advice.

“Shit!” Dipper stomped out the blue flames that licked around the carpet of the Shack’s living room. He didn’t mean to, it just happened. That was the fourth time in the past week he set the carpet on fire, and that didn’t even include the other accidents he had been having. Dropping to his hands and knees, he slammed his palms down on the fire until it eventually hissed away into smoke.

The shadows he accidentally summoned from under the fridge that nearly gave Grunkle Stan a heart attack. Forgetting how wide his wingspan was and knocking over some very dangerous chemicals on Ford’s desk. The fire alarm continued to shriek in his ears until he intentionally shot it down with another arc of blue flame, letting the now melted plastic top clatter to the floor beside him. A relieved sigh escaped his lips.

  
“Dipper” Mabel eyed him from the overstuffed armchair, Teen Teen magazine spread out across her lap, like a disapproving parent. “Swear jar. Now." 

  
Dipper rolled his eyes, but did as she asked. Rooting through his pockets he pulled out a tiny werewolf fang. (“Which I got in a very respectable way!” he said at the time. “Mrs. Willis’s pups are teething! She said I could keep the teeth as payment if I babysat for her.” He would have babysat the pups anyway, they were just so cute, but the promise of teeth excited him for some reason.) He dropped it in the jar alongside the collection of candies, 38 sided-die, and magic crystals. The jars were all lined up on the table in the parlor room, labeled with pink duct tape; the Swear Jar, Lost My Temper Jar, and the I Keep Waking Everyone Up At 3 am Because I’m Lurking Around In Their Dreams Jar. He was going to have a jar for everything if he kept this up.

  
The jars Mabel’s way of trying to control his new impulses. As much as she told him otherwise, Dipper was positive he picked up some of Bill’s personality traits. Over and uncontrolled usage of his powers, short-temper, and a fascination with collecting teeth. Or maybe it was just a demon thing. Either way, he didn’t like it. Things just weren’t going his way.

  
At that time, Stan and Ford barged in from the basement. Stan held a “demonic fire extinguisher” that Ford had created after Dipper’s first incident, made with a mixture of CO2, KHCO3, a flurocarbon found only in the nightmare realm, and liquid holy water. “Where’s the fire,” Stan shouted before taking a look around the room, and realizing the only thing left was just another black char in the carpet.

  
“Oh, man,” Dipper grumbled, folding his legs up so that he could float about 5 feet off the ground. “I’m really screwing this up. Some demon I am.”

  
“Aww come on, Dip in’ Dots. You’ll get the hang of it,” Mabel cooed as she dropped out of the chair.

  
“Don’t you think I would have controlled some of my powers by now? It’s been 310 days. Almost a year.” (It takes about 66 days to learn a new habit, and demonic powers should be no exception. By this point he should have learned how not to set the carpet on fire 4.696969--repeating for all infinity-- times, take away 1 of those times for the 2 months he spent completely invisible to everyone but Mabel while stuck in the mindscape until they finally figured out a good summoning ritual.)

  
Stan set the demonic fire extinguisher down. “Ahh don’t beat yourself up, kid. Learning anything is hard I’m still trying to figure out all the hip-lingo you kids use and Mabel’s been explaining it to me for the past year."

  
Mabel huffed. “Grunkle Stan, IGTGDFNNTF is not a tough acronym to understand.”

  
“See? She’s barely speakin’ English,” Stan continued.

  
Dipper ignored this. Learning wasn't hard for him. He loved to learn. He was a straight A student when he was still in school. If he wanted to pick up a new skill, he would, be it mental math, the sousaphone, or basic level engineering. And with his newly given omniscience, shouldn't everything come naturally to him? “I just don’t understand. I’ve mastered some elements of my powers; entering the physical plane when summoned, using offerings, I can even dream! Why is everything else so difficult?”

  
Ford rubbed his chin before offering a suggestion. “Dipper, have you ever considered that the factor might not be your ability level, but something else entirely?”

  
“What do you mean?”

  
Ford shrugged and sat down on the arm of the chair. “There are multiple factors that lead to under performance. We aren’t even certain how your powers work. Are they emotional, physical, psionic? If we can track down how they work, maybe we can figure out what is causing this blockage. Think of it as when humans get stressed, it can often lead to underperformance in areas where our skills are usually proficient.”

  
Dipper shrugged, “I guess? I feel like I would know if this was all caused by stress. But I guess I don't have a counter argument." If it really was stress, then he should be a complete hot mess. This was the most stressful year of his life thus far. 

  
Mabel popped up beside him and wrapped one arm around his shoulders. The very solid and real particles in her body tingled where they met his metaphysical and only temporary particles. “Come on, bro! Whatever it is, we can help you out! I’ve got my heart of gold, Ford’s got his brains, and if all fails Stan can just punch the problem away. Together, we should have no problem figuring out why your powers are being all stupid.” Stan and Ford nodded in agreement.

  
He really wished they wouldn’t get involved. In fact, maybe it would be for the best if they just stopped summoning him every morning. Maybe what he needed was some serious alone time in the mindscape where it didn’t matter what he set on fire, because nothing in the mindscape was real anyway. And besides-- he was always worried his powers would hurt them. So far he was lucky that he had only burned carpet. He didn't want to think about what would happen if his flames caught any of them. (Demonic flame, while used for a variety of reasons, can be deadly to physical lifeforms and objects if not used properly, burning at a temperature hotter than the Earth's sun.) 

  
But they really thought they could help him, and it’s not like he had any better ideas. He stared at Mabel’s sparkling brown eyes. “If you think it will help,” he answered sheepishly.

  
“Yes! 100% Without a doubt,” Mabel replied, grin taking up most of her face. “We’re going to help you become the best demon you can be!” The issue lied in his not really wanting to be a demon at all. 

\------

Ford plastered another electrode to his forehead. Wires sprung from him and drizzled to the floor like water spurting from a leaky pipe. Machines beeped, clicked, and flashed around him. Cameras stared at him with unforgiving and inanimate eyes. It was a laboratory from one of his favorite sci-fi films brought to life. Except, he was the experiment and rightfully so. “Uhm, Great Uncle Ford, what’s all of this for?”

  
Ford didn’t look at him, but instead handed him a bag of gummy bears, packaging crinkling delightfully. “Eat these. I'm offering them."

  
Dipper didn’t question the offering. Taking one finger, he sliced open the bag and shoved a handful of gummy bears into his mouth. One of the only cool things about being a demon was that he was able to isolate all the individual flavors of gummy bears: 3 green, 2 red, 2 orange, and no clear ones.

  
Ford stepped back from his machines, holding his arms out as if asking everything in the room to hold perfectly still. “Excellent. Everything is working perfectly. I’ve been looking into different pseudoscientific studies in the recent, and I think I’ve identified a few that may help us figure out how your powers work.”

  
“I don’t think it works that way,” he said, words obscured by the mouthful of gummy bears. Second cool thing about being a demon, he could eat as much sugar as he wanted and never have to worry about how unhealthy it was.

  
“Only one way to find out. Now,” he swiped the bag away and set it on his desk.

  
“Hey!” Dipper whined.

  
“You can have that back after the experiment. I needed to be sure you would stay in the physical plane for as long as it lasted.” He pulled Journal 4 (Ford kept multiple spare Journals in the Shack, finally getting around to the 4th one, which was dedicated entirely to figuring out what Dipper was) out of a drawer and set it down on his knee. “We’ll start with pyrokinesis, as it seems to be one of your main issues. I’m going to ask you to summon a flame, try to keep it small and contained to the palm of your hand. I’ll write down everything I can, including which parts of your brain lights up, how the chemicals and atoms will be reacting around you... you get the idea.”

  
“If you say so.” He pressed his back into the chair and held out one hand. Usually he didn’t think to hard about how he used his flames. They just appeared, whether he wanted them to or not. But this time he really did concentrate on it. Ford was right, Dipper had no idea how the flames actually got there. Maybe it was all scientific. Or maybe it really was about his emotions, how happy or sad he was in a moment.

  
The blue flames appeared in his hand. At first it remained relatively small, no bigger than a golf ball, pooling in his hand. It warmed his fingers, like holding a mug of hot chocolate. Except it was flame. Very dangerous and otherworldly flame. (When used with the intent of violence, demonic flame can incinerate even other demons in 3.216 seconds.) He knew that didn't matter. He used his flames for a lot of things, like summonings, or starting bon fires in the back yard during lazy summer nights. But he could have swore it was getting warmer, and bigger. (It was.) It gushed out between his fingers like when you try to light an old gas stove and when you wait too long for the spark to come on the air fills with gas and everything bursts into one flame all at once. "Oh no!" He tried to call it back to his palm, watching is waver and spurt, but it didn’t seem to want to stay.

  
“Don’t panic, Dipper,” Ford said, adjusting some of the dials and knobs on the surrounding machinery. He scribbled something down into the Journal.

  
Too late. He was panicking. All the machines kept wizzing and buzzing in his ears. He couldn’t control the omniscience, all the data running through his head at once. It was all so loud. It was actually giving him a headache. Was that even possible?  The fire oozed out from his fingers, shooting across the room in arches. The machines exploded, inky smoke rising from them, light popping like dying lightbulbs. The whole room went quiet. A thick ash covered the walls and whatever objects still remained in one piece. Most things were reduced to melted plastic, shards of glass, or dislocated screws. The air smelled like sulfur. 

Dipper jerked around, finding Ford standing exactly 3 feet away from the blast zone, covered in black dust, but also uninjured. (Had he been 3 feet closer...) "Ah! Great Uncle Ford! Are you okay?" 

He coughed, sending up a puff of the black dust into the air. He wiped is glasses clean. "Oh yes. I'm perfectly fine. I can certainly handle a little lab fire." 

  
“Oh man. I ruined everything. I’m so sorry! I can fix it! If you make a deal I can put it all back the way it was. I promise to make the price really low! I’m so sorry, Great Uncle Ford.” Dipper speed through his words so quickly that they were barely comprehensible.

  
Ford shook his head. “It’s okay, Dipper. I’m not upset with you.” He went to brush some of the ash off his shoulder, but instead pulled his fingers away, rubbing the black dust between his fingers. “This is all very interesting.”

  
“At least let me tell you all the data. Anything you need.”

  
Ford looked up from his fingers and cleared his throat. “That won’t be necessary. Everything should have backed up to an external hard drive. Besides, the damage is just as revealing as the results. Sometimes we only understand things when they break.” Reaching over, Ford grabbed the bag of gummy bears and tossed them to Dipper. "We've still got a lot of learning to do, Dipper. Now why don't you go on and rest. You're putting too much pressure on yourself." 

 

\-------

“Grunkle Stan, what are you doing?” Dipper followed Stan out the door. The air was slick with the smell of fresh rain, the mist still leaving a cool brush on bare skin. He barely had time to eat the rest of the gummy bears before Stan called him over (or technically, unhinge his jaw like a snake and swallow the gummy bears whole, which was another cool thing about being a demon-- at least according to Soos, who would try to make him swallow something whole at least twice a week). 

  
“I’m gonna help you learn to control your strength, in the same way my old man taught me! Ford can use his fancy machinery all he wants. But sometimes, you gotta do things the old fashioned way.” Stan leaned against one of the posts of the front porch and cracked his knuckles. “Imma teach you how to box. Something I shoulda done way before any of this Transcendence stuff. It’ll toughen you up, help blow off some steam. Already got it all rigged up.” He patted the black punching bag that hung like a butchered pig from the roof.

  
“Boxing? Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Dipper wasn’t athletic when he was still human, and he was pretty sure it still applied to his demon life too. Just because he had actual, physical strength did not mean he knew how to use it properly. And besides, if he really wanted to know how to box, all he had to do was close his eyes and think really hard about it. Then the knowledge would suddenly appear to him.

  
“I’m sure of it. Why don’t you go ahead and give the bag a swing. Show me what you got." 

  
It couldn’t hurt. After all, it was just a punching bag. Dipper balled his fist, drew back his arm, and planted his knuckles in the center of the bag with one very normal-- very human punch. The bag tilted back a little, but otherwise seemed to have no reaction.

  
“Aww, come on, kid!" Stan shouted. "Show me what you’ve got. Give it a real punch.” 

Dipper nodded. If it really was stress, he would have to use the full extent of his powers. He reeled back his arm a second time and thrust it forward with all of his strength. He knuckles blazed blue, fire cocooning around his hand. It blazed around him, crawling up his arm. When he looked down, a smoldering hole in the center of the punching bag stared back at him. The bag fell off of the chain holding it to the roof and spilled sand onto the muddy grass. 

  
“Well, that’s one way to do it,” Stan said, looking at the smoke rising off the bag. "If I'm being honest, I never thought I'd live to see the day you threw a good punch. Though your form could use some work." 

  
“Oh no. Not again,” Dipper sighed, hiding his face in his hands. “It’s getting worse.” He couldn't stop his mind from racing through the possibilities. What if the roof had collapsed? What if his flames spread too far? What if he had accidentally hit Stan? At the rate he was going, the Shack would burn down in 4 days. And he didn't want to think about what would happen after that. 

Stan put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't freak out. I got another bag in storage somewhere, but I'm thinkin' you might need something a little stronger." 

Dipper shrugged Stan's hand away. He backed up towards the door. His breath picked up. He didn't know why. He didn't need to breath. And the fact that he was doing something he didn't need to do but was doing anyway made him freak out even more. "You don't get it, do you? I-I'm dangerous. A punching bag is one thing! But... what if it's a person? What if... what if I lose my temper one day!" He stopped talking. His unnecessary breath was getting in the way. 

"Dipper. It's ok--" Dipper had already disappeared before Stan could finish speaking. 

  
\-------

Mabel sat Waddles down next to Dipper, having dressed him up in a white coat and a tie. “Go on. Tell Dr. Waddles what’s bothering you.”

  
“Go away, Mabel. I’m not in the mood.” He turned away from her, staring at the empty bedroom wall, floating a few feet over his bed. He had given up. Now he was just waiting around for someone else to summon him or for the gummy bears to wear off so he could float around the mindscape aimlessly for the rest of time. "You shouldn't even be here. I could hurt you. Go downstairs or something." 

  
Mabel lowered her voice to make a very poor Waddles impression and tapped a crayon against a notepad. “Hmm, and tell me how you feel about that.”

  
“SERIOUSLY, MABEL! LEAVE!” he shouted, voice shattering across the air and tiny flames crawling around his hair and shoulders. Waddles screeched in terror, leaping off of Mabel's lap and scampering under the bed. Dipper snarled with all of his teeth, like an animal defending its territory, before realizing exactly what he had done and shrinking back into himself. He had never yelled at her like that before. 

  
Mabel huffed out a sigh and crossed her arms, not even flinching at the outburst. “This is what you get, Dipper. Work with me here." He stopped fro a moment, watching Mabel's cool and unyielding expression. The patient stare to her eyes. How could she not be scared? He closed his eyes and nodded in defeat. Mabel pointed at the bed. She poised the crayon in her fingers. “Lie down then.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how the therapists do it in the movies. Maybe it will help you relax.” He didn’t say anything, but he did as she asked. It was easier than fighting her on the issue. His back pressed into the mattress, but he felt a peculiar weightlessness, like he wasn’t actually on the bed at all. He tucked his arms under his head casually. “Tell me how you’re feeling,” Mabel coaxed.

  
“I feel angry and afraid because I can’t control my powers. Today it’s carpet. Tomorrow it could be you, or Stan, or Ford. I can’t let that happen. I’ve been like this for almost a year. I’m tired of waiting. I want to be in control of my powers before someone gets hurt.” He glanced over at her. Mabel wasn’t taking notes as much as she was drawing artistic representations of what he was telling her. Though he wasn’t sure how the giraffe wearing a tutu played into this.

“Interesting,” Mabel mused. “And how does that make you feel?”

“Ugh!”

“Alright, alright. I can see you aren’t feeling very talkative. Let’s try something else.” She took off her Shimmery Twinkleheart watch and held it in front of his face. “Let’s try hypnotism. Maybe your subconscious will reveal what your problem is.”

“I can’t be hypnotized. I kind of control the brainspace and subconscious thought. Also, that isn’t really how it works.”

“Then mediate.” She drew her watch back and strapped it back around her wrist. “You’ve got some kind of mental roadblock you need to plow your mental car through while the cops chase you at high speeds through the mental forest.”

“Stan needs to stop taking you on trips with him.”

“This isn’t about Stan. This is about you. Now meditate all your stress away. I’ll put on some relaxing music.”

Dipper should have known that what Mabel considered relaxing was listening to a  _Lake Lads CD_  circa 1961, but he was eventually able to drone it out. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to be realizing. He knew it wasn’t stress… or at least it wasn’t stress until recently. He didn’t get stressed like he usually did. He used to feel it in his chest and in his lungs, swelling up until he couldn't feel it anymore. Now, stress felt more like a really hard  _Dungeons Dungeons and More Dungeons_  puzzle. He knew it had an answer, he just needed more time to figure it out. But anytime he tried to figure out the answer the only thing his omniscience would tell him he needed was time. Time was the one thing he had an infinite amount of, and so far time wasn’t doing him any good. He could feel Mabel's presence beside him, the loose strands of her hair brushing up against his arm while she sat patiently in her chair. But her presence was reassuring, even though he could feel the edges of sleep trying to creep up on her mindscape. Maybe it was okay to let himself slip for just a... 

  
When he opened his eyes, the bedroom was empty. He bolted upright and looked around. The attic was empty, though the faint echos of _Lake Lads_ still seemed to linger in the scentless air. 

  
_I was wondering when you’d come back. It's been a couple months,_  crooned the old woman with the turtle skull for a head. She sat at a table with a white lacy cloth placed over it that she was simultaneously sewing.

  
Dipper let his breath go. “Oh, it’s you.”

  
_You sound surprised._

  
He joined her from the opposite side of the table. He hadn’t seen the old woman with the turtle skull for a head in any of his recent dreams. He was starting to think she was just that, a dream. But she was starting to become familiar. “Relieved, actually. I need some advice. I can’t control my powers, they just keep going haywire and... I'm afraid I will hurt someone." 

  
The old woman with a turtle skull for a head grinned.  _Well, it’s a good thing you’re just in time for tea._  A cup and saucer appeared in his hands, brimming with a fresh white tea. She snapped her fingers, dropping 4 cubes of sugar inside. He took a sip of his tea, letting the warmth spill down his non-existent body. 

The old woman with the turtle head for a skull, gestured at the table. _As you can see, I’ve placed 3 candles in front of you._  She didn’t actually place any candles on the table, but when Dipper looked down at the table the old woman with the turtle skull for a head was adjusting them in to a perfect line. _I want you to light the middle one, and only the middle one on fire. You have nothing to worry about. Your flames can’t do any harm here._

It wan't the easiest task in the world. The first time he tried, his hands shook, fire sputtering out in all directions. Sometimes, none of the candles would light and the tablecloth would instead. Or all 3 candles would light. One time he only lit the outer 2. And the longer it took the more out of control his flames would become. He must have tried hundreds of times over. And the whole time the old woman with the turtle skull for a head would look at him and smile. He slammed his hands against the table, fire spouting everywhere, ripping up his arms and spilling over the edges of the table, and yet nothing turned to darkened ash. Realizing the table cloth was glowing with blue fire, Dipper sighed and wrapped his arms around himself. Even in his own dreams he couldn't control himself. He was going to have to put something in the I Lost My Temper Jar when he got back. It was like the fire was growling, ripping apart everything it saw in a vast hunger of his own incompetence. 

  
Eventually, he resorted to dropping back into his chair. “Why is this so hard? It’s one candle!"

  
The old woman with the turtle skull for a head chuckled, and with one long and withered finger, touched the wick of the middle candle, and lit it aflame.  _You're looking at things the wrong way._   _You are afraid of your own power, of yourself. I told you your flames could do no harm here and yet you were so overwhelmed by fear. You rarely use your powers for violence, only when you are defending yourself and others. You prefer to practice summonings and teleportation, rather than manipulating shadows or creating nightmares. But Dipper,_ the hollow of her eyes met his,  _you are a good person and you have nothing to be afraid of._

"Yes, I do! You just watched me set the whole place on fire! I have everything to be afraid of! I've turned into some kind of monster and I could kill my whole family without even thinking about it!" He stopped, taking a few short breaths to calm himself down.  

_Listen to me, dear. These powers cannot betray you because they are yours now. You have nothing to be afraid of because you have a compassionate soul. If you live in fear of who you have become, your powers will swallow you and corrupt your mind. But if you learn to live with them, to use them how you see fit, then you will never have to worry about harming anyone._

 

He paused, and wrung his hands around, claws digging into his palms. "You really think I can still be a good person... even like this?" 

 _You must stop being so hard on yourself,_ his companion cooed from across the table. She reached out and placed one warm but boney hand on his forearm. She felt very unreal to him. Unlike when he touched Mabel, and he could feel how real and alive her body was, the old woman with the turtle skull for a head felt perfectly ethereal and eternal. She felt like the soft embrace of sleep. _It is okay to fail, to not get things right the first time. It's okay to feel afraid. Just as long as those things do not take control of the good person I know you are._ She leaned back and pulled her hand away from him. _You’ve become very short tempered in the recent. You must have patience with yourself and with the world._

  
Dipper shrunk into himself, hunching his shoulders together and starting at his always-perfect, black shoes. “Now I feel ridiculous. I could have figured this out for myself." 

  
The old woman with the turtle skull for a head scoffed at this before taking a long sip of her tea. Dipper wasn’t entirely sure how she ate or drank anything. The jaw of her skull never moved, nor did any of the tea drizzle from the open gaps between her teeth.  _Nonsense. You’re a 13 year old boy. Even with your omniscience no one can expect you to know everything. Things are very hard for you right now. You feel like you have to grow up twice. Once as a human and once as a demon. You are allowed to make mistakes and you are allowed to need time. Just like anyone else. This is a big and terrifying change for you, it will be awhile before you can fully feel comfortable with yourself. You'll face some hardships along the way, but do not lose faith in yourself._

  
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  
_I am always right._

Dipper reached for his tea cup again. He liked how warm it felt in the palm of his hand, even if he didn't really like tea. "Thank you," he muttered, pressing his skin against the smooth porcelain. "It's nice to feel... understood. I guess. To admit that I'm scared and be told it's okay." 

She chuckled to herself, the sound rattling through her skull.  _You can always talk to me, dear. you don't have to feel ashamed about speaking with me. Now,_ she set her tea cup down.  _It was lovely seeing you again. But I think you need to go back home now. You can’t spend all of your time talking with some old woman. I think its time you went home and faced your fears._

\------

Mabel hovered over Dipper when he woke up, her hair dripping onto his face. “Dip? Thank goodness, I thought you weren’t gonna wake up. It’s been hours.” She flopped back onto the bed beside him, exhausted.

  
“Sorry, I fell asleep and got a little distracted." He rubbed at the back of his hair uncomfortably. 

  
That made her head pop back up and her mouth pull into a braces-filled grin. “Was it another one of those crazy dreams? With the old lady? I want to meet her! She sounds so cute!”

  
“Yeah. It was. And it was actually kind of helpful.” He bit down on the inside of his cheek. “Hey, do we have any candles and more of those demonic fire extinguishers?”

  
“Huh? What are you planning to do?”

  
“I need to stop living in fear of my powers. The more I work with them, the less afraid I'll be. I need to be more sure of myself and who I am." 

  
Mabel rummaged under her bed and in Fords lab until she produced 3 candles of equal size. Dipper practiced with them constantly, either in the backyard or in the mindscape. He rarely allowed himself the opportunity to stop, only to answer summons or to spend a little bit of time here and there with Mabel when he felt himself getting scared again. Stan and Ford did their best to encourage him, reminding him that it was okay to feel nervous, but that they believed in him. Mabel even got rid of all of his “bad behavior jars” in the Shack and gave him back all the treasures inside, figuring that they probably weren't the right kind of reinforcement. And it was good to know the still loved him, that they weren't afraid of him at all. 

Two weeks later, he finally lit the middle candle. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey- so this chapter changed quite a bit. The good news is that, while edits have to be made.


	4. Better Burnt Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1 Year~ post Transcendence
> 
> Mabel starts to worry about Dipper's change in behavior, and suggests the two go on a classic mystery hunt together. However, things don't go as planned when a new demon rolls into town.

Mabel watched Dipper through the corner of her eye. He was getting better at the whole “physical plane” thing, considering she had enough candy to keep him tethered to the world for at least a few minutes. Keeping him around for hours often involved baking a cake or having to prick her finger with a sewing needle to squeeze out a few drops of blood. ("Don't do that," he said as she ignored him. "You know I hate the blood.") A few drops of blood was worth getting to hang out with him. She tried to convince him this was only a temporary setback, and that with a little practice he would eventually be able to stay for as long as he wanted. They both knew that might not be true.

He lounged with his back against the wall, floating upside down, flipping through the pages of some self-help book he picked up as payment from one of his last summoners. She tilted her head to read the title, T _en Ways to Make Change Work For You_. That was the fifth book he picked up that month. He kept them stacked in the corner of the bedroom, including other boring titles like _Giving Anxiety the Axe: Behavioral Models that Can Work For You_ , and _Dealing With Your Own Inner Demons_. Mabel wasn’t entirely sure why he read them. Usually, he asked for other things: candy, Monstermon cards, or old VHS tapes. Other times, he would have to ask for things of more value, things that his summoner treasured: things that he could suck the emotional power from. For the most part, Mabel couldn’t understand why he would ask for books if he knew everything (“Could know everything”, he would correct. “Omniscience is honestly a little depressing if you use it all the time.”)

The answer was obvious. But she kept wanting to deny it. Maybe if she didn’t let sit too long in her brain it wouldn’t be true.

It was a silent cry for help. He was scared and didn’t know how to put his experience into words, if there even were words for it. They were nearing on one year now.  One year since the Transcendence, since Dipper was trapped alone in the mindscape, since Mom and Dad said they'd rather have a dead son than a demon. Do have to have a "One Year Since You Became A Demon" party? Is it like a birthday? Should there be cake or presents?

He tried to explain it to her once, how he felt about the whole situation, but retorted to saying that he couldn’t describe it in any human language. He lived in a metaphysical reality, things like words had no meaning in a place like that. She knew that was a lie. He just didn’t want to talk about it.

She set down the magazine she clearly wasn’t reading and sighed. Dipper just needed to get out of his own head for a bit… or get out of other people’s heads? She wasn’t sure how good he was at mind reading yet... or if he could read minds at all. She stared at him, flipping through the pages remarkably fast. She knew in her heart that he was still the same, but he was all different-y too. There was a thin wire that divided her brother and Alcor the Dreambender that would keep being plucked until it eventually broke. Her mouth tasted sour at the thought.

“Let’s do something fun today,” she said, without really thinking about it.

“Fun?" he replied without even looking up from his book. "Reading is fun." 

"There's only so many post-teen magazines I can read and 'Whose Reincarnation Are You" quizzes I can take before my brain turns to jelly. Come on, broseph! We both need a break. Let’s go fight monsters or something.”

He stopped reading, letting his eyes drift away as to not make eye contact. “I don’t know.”

“Dipper,” she groaned. “Don’t you have any kind of demon business or something? Anything to get us out of the Shack?” She rolled onto her back, letting her head and hair dip off the edge of the bed.

He set the book down, making it float as if resting on a piece of glass, and flipped himself upright. He thought for a moment, or actually, let his omniscience drop information into his head. “I guess do I have some investigating to do in the forest, and I may need Mizar for backup. Something weird is going on.” They had recently begun to create code names for the rest of their friends and family, partially for fun partially for their own protection. She secretly loved it when he called her Mizar. ("It's the brightest star in the big dipper," he said to her. "Really? Aww, you flatter me, bro-bro." He smiled, but refused to meet her in the eye. "Actually, it has a twin... named Alcor. It's the dimmest star". She didn't know how to answer.) Dipper grinned at her. “What can you offer me?”

She tapped her bottom lip with her purple-painted fingernail. “I can give you my leftover pizza in the fridge and the cookies I hid from Stan by putting them in the raisin bran box.”

  
He sighed, and then shot her a goofy half-smile. “Alright. Fine. You got me. Let’s go.”

\------

Dipper swallowed the last piece of cold pizza whole. Mabel was never sure if she found unhinging his jaw to be cool or creepy. She stomped through the forest beside him, pine needles soft under her shoes. She made sure to stop and grab a few handfuls and stuff them into her backpack. Dipper said the smell was familiar and reminded him of home, so it made summonings easier. (“I also think pine trees might be sacred to me, which is funny considering nothing is actually sacred to demons. Semantics are weird. But you get the point.”)

“So what exactly are you looking for?” she asked, pushing a tree branch aside with her glitter covered baseball bat, nails sticking out of the top. The bat was actually Stan's from his "off grid" days that he gave to her shortly after the Transcendence. He said he wanted her to have something more substantial than a grappling hook to protect herself with.

“I’m not so sure of that either.” He hovered over her left shoulder, it was kind of a force of habit, so that everyone knew approximately where he was even when he wasn’t in the physical world. Dipper stopped for a moment. He had this look when he tried to concentrate, he called it “casting his net into the barrel”. Something about waiting for all the answers to come to him. “Something entered the town last night. It has a really ugly aura, I don’t know how to describe it… but I feel something dark and malicious moving around. I can’t use my omniscience to figure out what it is-- so whatever it is, it’s stronger than me. However, nothing bad has happened since, so it might just be passing through.”

“So what exactly are you gonna do?”

“I’m gonna see if it tries to start any trouble. I need to make it clear that Gravity Falls is my territory, and make whatever it is leave. I’m still a fledgling demon, and partially human at that. I need to prove myself before supernatural creatures get the idea that they can walk all over me.”

She sucked in a breath, cold air rushing through her lungs and filling her mouth with the taste of bitter dirt. “I thought you said it was stronger than you?”

“It is.” He paused, “I’ll need you for backup, but if I tell you to run, you need to run. Find a place to hide. I’ll come back for you… if I come back.”

They had been on multiple adventures as Alcor and Mizar in the past months. The were the fairies stuck in the revolving door of a supermarket, a haunted rest stop, that run in with the Illuminati (Dipper did not like that at all, there was a slight mix up with the demon they actually wanted to summon--who was now permanently out of business). But this was the first time Mabel ever heard Dipper imply that he would fail. He always knew he would win, one way or another.

She nodded but said nothing in reply.

Dipper stopped hovering, and dropped down onto his knees, tucking his wings close to his back. A patch of charred dirt rested before him, faint lines where the grass still stayed green spinning and crossing over each other. He scooped some of it up with his clawed fingers and examined it under the sunlight. “Demonic flame.”

Mabel crouched down beside him. “What?”

He held the black dust up to her. “Remember when I was practicing with my powers and I set the basement on fire? Ford ran a few tests on the ashes left behind, and apparently it's not regular ash or fire. Demonic flame is different from mundane fire. It has unique properties depending on what the wielder wants it to do. It can be used to aide in teleportation, or it can be cool to the touch when used in deal-making. But when it actually burns something,” he twisted his finger, letting it the light toss off of the dust like glitter, “it leaves behind this magic residue.”

“It’s so pretty!” She paused, “So what exactly does it mean?”

The gold in his eyes burned and ached against the blackness. “It means that there’s another demon in Gravity Falls.” He shook the powder off of his finger and pointed at the charred dirt. “And that must be his circle. It’s like social security number, or a signature. Demons use it as identification and for summonings. Except, I don’t know whose circle this is… come to think of it, I don’t know anything about other demons.”

“You don’t?”

He shook his head and proceeded to float over the ground. “Only what I’ve gathered through experience and research. Somethings I innately know, sort of like an instinct-- devouring souls to gain power, or that I need offerings or possessions to be in the physical world. Everything else is like a gaping hole in my mind. Demons are immune to each other's omniscience.”

A crackling noise swelled against his ear, getting closer and closer. He tossed one arm in front of Mabel, and placed his back to her chest, the immaterial feel of his black coat sticking to her sweater, and his wings extending to make him seem bigger, more inhuman. “Stay behind me, Mizar. Don’t say anything.”

There was another thing about when he called her Mizar. It made her afraid. She took the name to hide her identity, knowing her name was just a step closer to knowing Dipper’s-- and wreaking havoc on their family and the world. There was a lot of power in true names. If you knew a demon's real name, it gave you power over them. (One time, while trying to scold him for using his shadows to mess with the customers in the Shack, she called him by his true name. She called him Mason. The sound of his name caused him to double over in pain, covering his ears. After that she promised never to use it for anything.)

The conglomeration of different colored eyes connected at the base of a medulla oblongata peeled through the cover of the trees. Optic nerves and blood vessels braided into each other, bursting open with the pulse of wine colored blood, too rich to be human but releasing the familiar scent of metal. The blood drooled onto the ground, turning the grass and pine needles brown where they met. Mabel’s stomach lurched. She knew none of the parts were actually human, but she couldn’t help but imagine if they were. Imagining the gaping sockets left in someone’s skull, the feeling of her own eyes being ripped out, the snap of nerve endings. And as much as she wanted to, every thought racing through her mind telling her to do so, she couldn’t look away from it.

“I am Metus,” he said, despite having no mouth, “Blight of the Mind, Revealer of Truths.”

Dipper’s hand pushed her back. He didn’t dare look at her as he stepped forward. “I am Alcor the Dreambender, bender of dreams… wait… no, that came out wrong. I’m the…” He fumbled for the right words. So much for proving himself.

“I know who you are, half-breed. I’ve heard your name whispered across the dimensions. You reek of your impurities, your human soul.” The demon’s voice rattled through his non-existent mouth, course and gravelly, like a 70’s horror film monster.

Dipper cleared his throat, but couldn’t cover up the nervous crack that broke though. “This is--” his voice lowered into something more inhuman, like the sound was bending from the world around him instead of from his throat. “THIS IS MY TERRITORY. I HAVE NO QUARREL WITH YOU. LEAVE WHILE I STILL ALLOW IT.”

“You don’t get it, do you, Dreambender?” Metus moved around him, wrapping the tail of its medulla oblongata around his shoulder and creeping under his chin. Mabel urged herself closer to him, digging her fingers into the sleeves of her coat. “This isn’t about quarrels or territory. This is about you. Things like you shouldn’t exist. You’re a disgrace to demons, a bastard amongst us. You consider yourself one among mortals and hide away in the physical plane.” All of his eyes shifted to Mabel in one sharp choreography, silently telling her to mind her own business. She backed away, easing into the cover of the trees. He continued, looking back to Dipper. “You are as a candle, better burnt out.”

Dipper countered, stepping to the side to block Metus’s view of Mabel, and hers of him. Trying to distract him from her. “What I do is my business. I’ll stay out of your way if you stay out of mine.”

“You are incredibly ignorant.” Metus’s medulla oblongata continued to slither around Dipper’s throat, making slimy sounds as it stuck and crawled across his skin. “Do you know why they call me the blight of the mind?”

He stood perfectly rigid, trying lean back like the bough of a tree in the wind. “No.”

“That is because you are less powerful than you think.” Metus tightened his grip around Dipper’s throat, not to try to make him suffocate, but to force him to look directly into the amalgamation eyes staring at him. Mabel caught the scream before it escaped her throat. Her feet felt hammered into the ground, too afraid to move, but too afraid to look away. Metus continued, lowering his gravel voice into a near-whisper, a low drone in her ear, though he wasn't even speaking to her. “They call me the blight because I eat away at the mind. I prey on fears and insecurities to deteriorate everything into insanity. Even you are not safe from me, half-breed. I can see straight into your mind. You have so much to be afraid of. Allow me to become one of those things.”

Dipper pried at Metus, trying to free himself of the greater demon’s grip, kicking and struggling but having no success. He summoned flames from his hands, commanded shadows to creep up from behind trees and under bushes. His wings flapped violently, like a bird plucked out of the air. Yet, he couldn’t even leave a mark on Metus. His flames would sizzle out before they could burn, and his shadows were beaten into the dirt.

He barely choked out his next words, “Run! Mizar, run!” The innumerable eyes of Metus glowed an inky black, and hummed with the vibration of a rickety radiator about to explode.

Mabel closed her eyes and turned away, escaping into the security of the trees. She crouched into the cover of bushes, branches and thorns pierced into her spine. Sweat melted over her palms, making the handle of her baseball bat slick. And Dipper’s fearful screams were so loud and discordant that they made her ears bleed. The blood dripped down her jawline. 

She should run, she knew she should run. That’s what Dipper told her to do. And as much as she willed her legs to move, they remained stiff. But she couldn’t stop hearing his screaming. She looked over to him, clawing and gasping. Dipper was in trouble, and there was no way he was getting out of this one on his own. She couldn’t just leave him there to die. 

Dragging her fingers through the dirt, Mabel grabbed a decent size rock and squeezed it in her palm, jagged edges poking at her skin and bones. She staggered upwards, balancing against a tree. Then she reeled her arm back, and whipped the rock square into one of Metus’s eyes.

Only his one eye blinked, but all of them lost their inky glow, returning to an almost-human appearance. Dipper’s screaming stopped, though a wheeze took its place. His fingers still gripped at the medulla oblongata around his neck, though this time with less desire and strength, only a weak tremble. Realizing exactly what she had done, Mabel took a step backwards, only to find that Metus seemed to come closer without even moving at all.

So she ran. She shouldn’t have done that. Now Metus was going to kill them both. Her feet pounded against the uneven ground, wobbling the joints of her ankles and knees. A pair of eyes extended in front of her, cartoonishly extending on ever-expanding nerves. “Not so fast.” One of the eyes wrapped its fleshy nerve around her neck and dragged her backwards, heels scrapping the dirt and leaves into thin lines. She kept her grip on her baseball bat, trying to drive one of the nails into the long strand of nerve ending to no avail.

“You made a grave mistake,” he said. “You have no idea what you are messing with. I can see all your fears, your unremarkable human lifespan. Do you really think a rock can stop something like me?”

She looked at Dipper again, still trying to break free. And though his voice was weak, she could hear him call her, tell her to run and leave him. But that wasn’t an option. She was his Mizar, and he needed back up. He didn’t have to deal with things on his own.

Mabel grimaced, feeling the blood smear against her chin and down her jaw. “You are the one who made a mistake. Do you even know who I am?”

Metus laughed, “Who do you think you are, little girl?”

She gripped the baseball bat in her hand, something coursing up and down her arm. Something ancient and primal but still very much her—like she just hadn’t known this part of herself until now. Her body felt like a burning star. “I’m Mizar. Twin Star. Sister of Alcor the Dreambender. And I’m not afraid of you!” When she brought the bat down, she wasn’t expecting to see what happened next. The burning arched through her like lightning and out through the top of her bat. It sparked and glowed a soft pale gold, not the color of jewelry, but like the first pull of dawn over the horizon. It was warm like sharing body heat underblankets, or the kiss of sun in the summer. She was a brighter burning star. She couldn’t kill Metus, but she could blind him. If she wasn’t afraid, he would be powerless against her.

Words spilled out of her mouth, without much thought or reason to them. “I won’t let you hurt my brother! Leave and don’t come back. If you do, Alcor will kill you! He’ll be ready!”

Metus reeled back from it, eyes covered in a black but shimmering ash. He dropped Dipper, leaving him carelessly tossed on the ground, ambling about blindly. “You wretched mortal! Don’t think you have outwitted me. I will kill you and the half-breed yet.” And with that, he left in a glowing cast of red demonic flame.

Mabel abandoned the baseball bat and ran over to Dipper, who laid unmoving in the grass. He looked much different somehow. Still a demon with pointed ears, wings, and odd colored eyes, but he looked softer, and smaller. More like a child with his fingers tangled in the grass and hair falling across his forehead.

She scooped his head onto her lap and shook his shoulders. “Bro! Are you okay? Did the creepy-eye monster make you go insane? Please tell me you’re okay! I don’t think we would be able to find a therapist who would take you!”

He blinked awake, dazed and confused.  Mabel leaned back and allowed him to stagger upright, resting his head against her shoulders. A tremble cracked through him, his body having a hard time resting between reality and the mindscape. “Where’s Metus? Did he hurt you?” He was breathing heavy, even though he didn’t need to breath. (“Force of habit,” he told her once. “When I get scared or excited I start breathing really heavy. Otherwise, I actually forget to breath most of the time.”) 

“Gone.” Her concern turned into a smug smile. “I don’t know how I did it, but I used my baseball bat to burn his eyes and blind him! It was so cool! I can’t believe you missed it!” 

Dipper looked down at her baseball bat, the top now covered in a dark but glittering soot. It shined even more than the ash left behind by his own demonic flame, like it had dust of diamonds in it. He flopped his head back against her. “You can do demon magic. Of course, why didn’t I consider that before? I mean, I knew it had a possibility of 2.89% but I didn’t think it would actually happen. That would explain why you can see into the mindscape.” And perhaps it explained why he wasn’t fully a demon. The rest of Bill’s power had to go somewhere, so it went to Mabel. But Dipper didn’t say that part aloud.

“Woah, really? That’s so cool! Does that mean I can make deals or enter people’s dreams? Hmm. I wonder what Waddles dreams of?”

Moving away from her, Dipper pulled his legs up and pressed his forehead into his knees. His hands gripped around his shins. “I should have been able to stop him. I don’t want to think about what I would have done if he killed you. It would have been… apocalyptic at best. Metus showed me all the terrible things my powers could do to people and--” he looked up she was sitting next to him and promptly silenced himself. “Nevermind.” He proceeded to further bury himself into his knees.

Mabel pressed her palm into the fresh grass and fallen leaves and leaned forward. “Dipper,” she whispered.

“Mhm?”

“You know I’m always here, right? You can tell me anything, even if I don’t understand it. It’s time for you to get your head out of those self-help books and into the real world. You’ll feel better if you just talk it out to me.”

His breathing momentarily ceased. “I don’t want to scare you.”

“It scares me more when you don’t talk.”

He nodded, calculated rather than emotional. “There’s so much. I don’t know where to start…” His words drifted, but he kept his lips pursed together, as if he were letting his thoughts drift away on a boat. “Metus was right, you know, about being a revealer of truth. That’s what fear does, it reveals the ugly truths. I am afraid of everything I don’t know, but I am also afraid of knowing. I don’t know what I am or what I am capable of. I am, as Metus said, better burnt out.”

Mabel huffed out a sigh and wiggled herself closer to Dipper. One of her hands unlatched his from his shin and intertwined their fingers, hers very human, and his clawed. “We’ve got a couple hours until we have to be back for dinner. That’s plenty of time for us to find out together. You’re allowed to be scared of things, Dipper. You just don’t have to be when I’m around. I’ll look after you.”

He squeezed her hand, the press of the metaphysical realm against the flecks of sweat on her skin. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you, Mabel.”


	5. A Possession Situation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1 year, 1 month~ Post-Transcendence 
> 
> Mabel asks Dipper to possess her and take her math test in her place.

“Uhg,” Mabel moaned and slammed her face into her math book. “So boring.”

  
“Nope! No way!” Dipper arched his fingers as if gripping onto something, levitating Mabel’s head of her book and forcing her spine into an upright position. He then gestured towards the book, turning to the next page, and commanded that her glass of extra caffeinated Mabel juice be refilled. “No sleeping! You’re supposed to be studying.” 

  
Groaning, Mabel reached for her sparkly pink juice, fumbling to put the straw in her mouth. “And what are you doing?” she spoke with the straw crammed in the side of her cheek. 

  
Dipper shrugged and leaned back in the air, as if lounging on a folding chair at the pool. “Helping. Like I said I would. We made a deal, after all, and I want those pancakes you promised.”

  
She sucked the juice up through a bendy straw and then pushed the cup away. The stark light of her desk lamp in the nighttime cut across her face, revealing the bags that sunk under her eyes. “But I’m so tired, besides it will get done eventually.”

  
“No, it won’t. Your test is tomorrow morning.”

  
“Whelp. All the more reason to catch some zzz’s.” She spun around in her desk chair to find Dipper now standing in front of her. He was getting scary good with his powers the past few weeks. He was practicing on a more regular basis, but she suspected it also had something to do with the power of deal making. Something about magical contracts made him a lot stronger. 

  
He crossed his arms, frown casted across his ever-youthful face, a look that Mabel didn't like at all. “You have to do well in school, Mabel.”

  
“Says you. You just make a funny face and then you know everything! You have totally forgotten how hard it is to do things the human way.”

  
“Have not!” he countered.

  
“Have to!” she shouted back.

  
Dipper groaned and rubbed at the bridge between his eyes and nose. “Listen, I know math isn’t your favorite subject, but sometimes you have to do things that aren’t fun or exciting. I made a deal that I would help you pass this test and now I have to uphold my end of the bargain. This isn't like when we were in 7th grade. I can't give you the answers." (In 7th grade, the twins sat next to each other in class. Dipper would angle his paper just right so that Mabel could see his answers. She would then spend her allowance on milkshakes from The Pie House down the street after school to thank him.) (She desperately wished they could go back to those days.) 

  
A grin uncurled, starting from the center of her lips and spiraling outward. “You did make a deal didn't you? And that means you have to fulfill it…” One finger tapped against the bottom on her chin in a slow repetition.

  
“Mabel… don’t you dare say it.” Dipper hesitated despite already knowing what she was thinking.

  
She jumped from her chair so that her face was level with his. “I want you to possess me and take the test for me!”

  
He cut one of his arms through the air, making a bright red STOP sign appear before her before dematerializing with a blink of her eye. “No way! You know I don’t possess people! Possession is what got me into this mess.” Or at least, he had always theorized it was. One thing Dipper could never do was try to figure out Bill’s motives. Why would someone willingly destroy themselves and then give all* their magic powers to their enemy? The only theory Dipper could come up with was that his first deal with Bill over the laptop never ended. He was technically Bill’s last tie to the physical world. And that Bill was just prepping him as another-- slightly more powerful-- vessel in order to destroy the world again. But that was just a theory.

_*Of course, Dipper didn’t have all of Bill’s power. Mabel had a small amount, just enough to keep her human, while he had just enough to rip his humanity away. This was the one flaw in his theory._

He shook his head and sighed. “My answer is no. I’m not going to do to you what Bill did to me.”

  
“Dip,” Mabel cooed. She reached up and wrapped her hand around his wrist. “You aren’t Bill, okay? You aren’t going to do anything to hurt me. I think it might be good for both of us to at least try it. Think about it. You’d get to have your first day of high school that isn’t spent hovering, completely invisible, over my shoulder. Wouldn’t it feel good to have a human body again, even if only for a few hours? You could be--”

  
He cut her off. “Normal.”

  
“Yeah.”

  
When Mabel finally started high school, the sense of grief and isolation that followed Dipper felt like a rain cloud over his head. Before the Transcendence, Mabel was so worried about high school… and he was too. Sure, he was excited about trigonometry, and joining the AV club, and trying to make friends. But he also dreaded the social pressure, and feared what would happen if school stopped being easy. And when he realized Mabel would have to go through it without him, he was so worried about her he accidentally plagued the whole town with dreams of being ditched at the dance or coming to school in only their underwear (that was an awkward apology to make, he was still learning how the actual “dreambending” part of the job worked).

  
“What if we get caught?” he continued. “You'll get detention. And what if there's an emergency? I’d technically be you for the day-- that makes being Alcor tough. I’d lose most of my powers.”

  
“Pfft, it’ll be fine, bro. It’s just high school. There are no monsters or demon hunters or anything like that. Just crippling self-doubt and acne. I’ve been doing it for a couple weeks now. You’ll have nothing to worry about.”

  
Dipper spoke in all one breath. “Fine. You’ve got a deal.” He held out his hand to her, encased in blue fire. “But if I’m going to possess you, it’s not going to be for just a math test. I want the full experience. One whole day.”

  
Mabel stuck out her hand and grasped his, “You gotta deal. My body is yours for the next 24 hours! No ifs, ands, or buts! And no backing out!” The fire engulfed both their hands, cool to the touch like the first fall of snow.

  
“I still don’t like this, though. Let the record show I was against it.” A literal scroll unraveled behind him, while a quill checked one mark under the word AGAINST, leaving the tally under FOR blank.

  
“Pfft. You’re already so negative. You’ll see it was a good idea all along.” As she yawned and stretched, Dipper watched as her mindscape began to drift away into dreams of cute boys in minimal clothing and stuffed animals singing showtunes. He scooped her up off the chair and gently eased her into bed.

  
“I really hope you’re right about this.”

 

\------

  
When Mabel woke up, Dipper had already started the day. She felt herself resting in the back of her consciousness, looking through her own eyes as if on a TV screen. She was in the bathroom brushing her teeth-- correction: Dipper was definitely driving and brushing her?... their?... teeth (the language was suddenly a challenge).

  
Mabel went to speak, but realized she had no control over her mouth, and that the words came out as an echo in her skull.  _“Uhh, Dipper?”_

  
He spit in the sink, and looked directly in the mirror, the same way someone would break the fourth wall in a film. “Oh good, you’re awake. I figured I’d let you sleep in, since, you know, I’m in charge today.” (It had taken him awhile to readjust to the whole "human body" thing again. Remembering how gravity felt pressing onto a body, the pinch of hunger in your stomach, walking on solid ground. The sensation of a beating heart and lungs that filled with air made him swell with a spin of nausea.)

  
She looked closer at her own reflection, knowing it was and wasn’t her all at once, but there was definitely something very peculiar. Her eyes were pitch black with gold plates for irises.  _“My eyes!”_

  
He rubbed at their arm, nervously looking away from the mirror. “Yeah, it’s a little obvious. But don’t worry, you can only see it if you know to look for it. I have a plan to make sure nobody notices.”

  
_“Well this is weirder than I thought it would be.”_  She paused, _“Hey, wait. When you got possessed you were some kind of floaty sock puppet. Why don’t I get to be a sock?”_

He groaned and started to brush through their hair. He was awfully delicate about it, taking each clump and brushing as if her hair was made of spun gold. Then it occurred to her, he was trying to be careful with her body. He was afraid that every little move could hurt her. He moved on to the next clump of hair and continued to brush. “I was a ghost, first of all. Not a sock. And there’s different kinds of possession. Bill kind of picked the worst one for me-- he also did it with the intention to kill me but that's moot. This option allows us to switch off who has control. Consider it sharing more than possession.”

  
_“I wanted to ditch school and be a sock puppet all day,”_  Mabel grumbled.

  
“It’s not as fun as you think it would be, trust me.” He set down the brush, and for a moment, dragged their fingers through her hair and down her cheek. Mabel couldn’t pin down the emotion he was feeling, but she felt consumed by a certain kind of sadness. He missed being human. He longed for the ability to actually be there with another person. The course tangle of hair and the feeling of someone else’s breathing. But maybe, just maybe, the gesture wasn’t meant for him. Maybe it was meant for her, as if they were both standing there.

  
Dipper straightened their back and cleared their throat. “Could uhm… you drive for a moment? I didn’t want to get dressed myself, I figured I’d save that for you.” Mabel looked back in the mirror. Yup, still wearing an oversized t-shirt and socks. “It seemed like an invasion of privacy. I mean, I’m technically possessing you which is a huge invasion. But you know what I mean.”

  
It wasn’t the first time the twins had been in the other’s body. There was that time before the Transcendence when they had that issue with the body swapping carpet. They had made a very strict rule about anything below the waist. Somehow, all of this moved like clockwork to the twins.  _“Good call. Hand over the controls.”_

\----

  
Dipper walked into the school, head down so that Mabel’s extreme amounts of thick, brown hair would cover any potential of his inhuman eyes being seen. His plan wasn’t brilliant per say (there still was a 87% chance someone would notice), but it was a plan. Right before leaving school the twins crept down the stairs into Ford’s room to find one of his old pairs of glasses (considering he had spares for his spares). The glasses should be enough of a distraction to keep anyone from looking too close and realizing that Mabel’s brown eyes were actually black and gold.

  
Luckily, he had followed Mabel around the school enough times that he already knew her schedule (or rather, he knew everything, but he often tried to not know everything about Mabel. He liked her best when she was full of surprises).

  
“I thought this would be fun but I'm actually just nervous and sweaty.” He spoke primarily in a whisper so no one would hear. High school was so far a lot worse up close. The hallways were crowded, the air felt moist and human, and it all smelt like body spray and hormones. 

  
_“That's high school for ya’! It'll be okay. Math is second period, so we can always take turns switching in and out.”_  Mabel’s voice chimed, a literal inner monologue.

  
“Nope. No way. Normal humans don't just switch out. But I can’t help but get the feeling something bad is going to happen. It’s like we’re being watched.”

  
_“1.) You feel like that all the time, with or without special powers. 2.) Of course we’re being watched, there’s security cameras in the hallway and stuff. Not to mention all the people surrounding us.”_

  
“No, it’s not like that. It’s--” a screech echoed across the hallways. Candy and Grenda hurled themselves at Dipper, embracing him in a hug-- Grenda’s being particularly painful, but the good kind of painful that he missed.

  
“Hey, girls,” Dipper choked, realizing Mabel’s lungs were quickly running out of air. “Can you put me down now?” Letting go, Candy and Grenda barely allowed Dipper a moment to gasp for air.

  
Candy reached up, for the glasses. “Hey, I don’t remember you wearing glasses. Are they new?”

  
Dipper batted her hand away. He actually had no idea what to say to Mabel’s friends. Omniscience was of no help to him, it was all a matter of if he could be convincing as Mabel rather than anything he actually said. “Yup, definitely new. Very sudden onset of… nearsightedness? There was nothing else the doctors could do.” He was just as poor of an actor as always. 

  
_“You know, I thought the demon stuff would have made you a better liar.”_

  
“You poor thing,” Candy replied.

  
“They look like your Great Uncle’s!” Grenda commented. “Are you,” she gasped, “wearing old man glasses?”

  
Biting down on their bottom lip Dipper tried to think through another excuse. “Well you see I--”

  
Candy moved close enough that her reflection was cast in the glasses, and pursed her lips in calculated thought. Then she jumped back in surprise, “Oh Mabel your eyes! They’re--”

  
Dipper cut her off. “Fine, you caught me. Listen--”

  
“Completely hidden behind your new glasses! You need something more your style,” Candy continued. “I might have an old pair in my bedroom.”

  
Grenda nodded in agreement. “I can’t believe you didn’t call us. We’re your fashion team! We would have helped you pick out a pair!”

  
“I haven’t been able to pick them out yet… these are a loan?” Dipper said, unable to fully hide the hesitation in his tone. He winced and waited, as if that wouldn’t be a proper response. Something sharp and demanding ran across the halls. “Oh gee, wouldn’t you know. It’s the bell. I gotta go to my locker. See you girls, later!” He ran down the halls, not actually caring that Mabel’s locker was actually on the second floor and her first class was on the third.

  
_“You’re so embarrassing. I can’t believe what just happened,”_  Mabel groaned.

  
Dipper chuckled under his breath, “Hey, you’re the one who made a deal with a demon. You should have known nothing would go as planned.”

 

\-------

  
Pretending to be Mabel for the next couple of periods went better than Dipper expected it would. For the most part, he sat around pretending to pay attention while writing notes to Mabel in her notebook (since he couldn’t actually talk to her out loud during class without blowing their cover). And he would admit that seeing the look on Ms. Roger’s face was pretty funny when “Mabel” was the first one to turn in her math test with all correct answers. For lunch he packed mostly candy and a sandwich, and the twins took turns with the controls. Mabel would do all the talking while Dipper would do all the eating. It was nice to actually eat something like a person rather than swallow it whole or just sort of absorb it (or whatever he did when he ate… he hadn’t really thought about it, nor did he want to). Though he could say it had its downsides too. Human bodies were awfully unreliable. Gym class was just as bad as he remembered it being. Not to mention being in his twin sister’s body was a whole new level of physical and emotional discomfort.

But there were just a few more periods until the end of the day, and as long as he did Mabel’s homework he could spend the rest of the day actually enjoying himself for once.

  
A catch of red hair curled through the hallways, backpack slung over one shoulder and voice cutting through the ramble of voices. “Hi, Wendy!” Dipper called, waving one hand in the air. He had almost forgotten Wendy was a senior in high school already. And her aura practically screamed senior, her casual stance and mostly empty backpack, but also the air she carried that everything was alright. 

  
She grinned and waved before walking over. “Hey, Mabel. What’s up?”

  
Dipper panicked. Right, he was playing Mabel today. He forgot about that too. “Nothing unusual. Just school. Just a regular day at school.”

  
_“Way to blow it, dipstick,”_  Mabel chided.

  
Wendy laughed and tucked her hair behind her ear. “So what’s with the glasses?”

  
“Oh. Just trying out a new look. You know, wearing glasses make you look more ten times more attractive, though I think that’s a bit of an over-exaggeration.” Dipper tore his glance away and bounced nervously on both feet.

  
“Uh-huh… are you okay? You're actin’ a little weird.”

  
“I'm great! Never better!”

  
She rocked back on her heels before her green eyes widened and she pointed at something down the halls, “What's that?” Wendy pried the glasses of their face and stared close into those black and gold eyes. “Oh my God. Dipper?”

  
Mabel snickered. _“See? You blew it, bro. I would never say over-exaggerate, also you didn’t think to put stickers on our glasses. I thought you knew me, but I guess I was wrong.”_

  
Dipper pulled Wendy by the arm, pressing the both of them up against a set of lockers. He whispered, “Shhhh… we don't want anyone to know. Okay?” He glanced around to make sure no one noticed and put the glasses back on. On one hand, this was a flaw in their plan, and a greater chance they would get caught. On the other hand, he desperately missed getting to hang out with Wendy in public. He grieved at the fact that he missed the opportunity to go to high school with her, and to hang out with her friends. He missed things the way they were. 

  
Mabel pried the controls from him, knocking him momentarily back into her subconscious. “Hi Wendy! It's me, Mabel now! I'm talking to you with my mouth and so is Dipper!” she shouted. Stealth and secrecy were not her high points. 

  
Wendy raised an eyebrow, “Wait is this some sort of…”

  
“Possession situation. Yeah it is,” Dipper replied, trying to wriggle his way up into total control. But despite his power, Mabel was very strong of will.

  
“Yeah! Dipper took my math test for me!” Mabel added, bouncing up and down on her toes.

  
Wendy beamed, smile stretching across her face. “Oh sick! Hey man, can you take my college entrance exams? I want to stick it to the government about standardized testing.”

  
“No way,” Dipper pushed Mabel back into her subconscious. “Being Mabel is kind of weird. I didn’t realize how much hair got into your mouth when its so long, or how drafty it is under this skirt. Not to mention the fact that Mabel coughs up glitter? There’s no supernatural explanation for that. But, I don’t think I could handle possessing anyone who wasn’t Mabel.”

  
Wendy laughed and tucked some of her hair under her hair under her hat. “Alright, I won’t torture you more than Mabel already has. But keep me in mind next time you're thinking about causing some havoc in the real world.” 

"I can assure you this is the last time it will ever happen," he whispered. "I am sick of all the havoc that's been going on. For now on, I'm laying low." 

  
A deep growl echoed through the school. The floors shook and the display cases full of trophies from the 80s rattled, the lights flickering in tune with them. Dipper grabbed onto Wendy’s arm, trying to keep her balance, but realizing his balance was also off. Life was a little more difficult when you couldn't fly. 

  
“Is this an earthquake?” Wendy asked, looking around the hallway.

  
Dipper tried to zone out the sound of clattering lockers and screams just long enough to figure out exactly what it was. It was definitely no earthquake, he would have known that was coming a while ago. But if it wasn’t an earthquake… what was it?

  
Mabel’s voice quivered in the back of his mind.  _“Uh, Dip?”_

  
The ground broke open like stitches tearing from an open wound. Dipper grabbed Wendy, pulling her down to the ground as flakes of earth and tile flung up from the floor. The rumbling in the floor reminded him of when their parents took the twins to an amusement park and the consistent rattle of being pulled upwards on the chain of a roller coaster, rocking his stomach back and forth so wildly that it made him nauseous. When the rumbling seemed to stop, he rolled back over, feeling something warm and wet sting when he moved. Blood. Red, human blood pooled at Mabel’s knees. Right. He wasn’t invincible in Mabel’s body. It was time for this possession to end before things on any worse. But when he tried to leave, something kept him confined, like a chain tugging at his leg or a glass window surrounding his sister’s body.

  
_“Uh-oh.”_  Mabel said.  _“I gave you my body for 24 hours… and I said you couldn’t back out.”_

  
Dipper paused, “Are you kidding me?”

  
_“Well, I really wanted you to take that test.”_

  
Dipper groaned, trying to stand up but feeling the strain of a tired and injured human body weigh down on him. “I cannot believe you right now.”

  
Wendy rose unsteadily to her feet, brushing off the debris from her shirt and face. “What the hell was that?”

  
Dipper stared at the crater in the floor, surrounded by the dark shimmer of ash. “We’re about to find out.”

  
Squirming on the ground were a dozen centipedes, the size of large dogs. Dipper tried to focus, but the screams of everyone around him kept getting in his way. Of course it was demons, that would explain how they evaded his omnipotence. The demons wriggled closer closer, turning their wrinkled heads in every direction. Then they rose up onto their abdomens, inhaling through their mouths, and locked onto the twins.

  
“Oh no,” Dipper said mostly to himself, sprinting in the opposite direction. “What are we gonna do? We can’t ignore these things until I can get out of your body.” Dipper said, trying to disappear into the crowd long enough to think of a plan.

  
“Then we’ll just have to fight them now!” Mabel plunged into control of her own body, and started to scramble through the crowd, looking for something in particular. The demons lurched against the students, rearing their hollow mouths lined with rows of tiny arrow teeth. Catching sight of the handle of a baseball bat sticking through the top of someone’s backpack, Mabel plowed over the people in front of her and yanked it free. “I’ve gotta borrow this! I’ll give it back, I promise!” She cleared a path through the running and screaming student body, beating down the demons one by one. Gold fire spit out from her like a fire cracker, leaving a dusting of shimmering ash on the ground. 

Charging at one of the demons, she reeled back her arms, and swung the bat, sending a few golden sparks up into the air. The thing reeled back momentarily, but soon continued to push forward through the darkening dust and fading lights in the hallway. It heaved itself over her opening up its jaw, revealing the black hole of its mouth. “Uhh Dipper… now would be a great time for you to tell me what’s going on,” Mabel stuttered, backing herself up into a wall.

  
_“Okay, okay.”_  Dipper’s omniscience filled in the black in a rush, as if a bucket of water had dropped on him.  _“Those are mandobices-- lesser demons that live underground and are native to the nightmare realm. Their primary skill is the ability to eat through dimensional barriers and open gateways. They have no postformal thought and can’t make decisions for themselves, and will obey a master… but I don’t know who is controlling them.”_

  
Mabel sucked in a breath, “Oh man, you really think that fast? It was so weird, like someone was dropping words into my brain from the top of a building.” It gave her a combination headache and brain freeze. 

  
_“Yup, you get used to it. Now try to hit that thing in the back of the throat.”_

  
“I’ll give it a--” a demon rose up and knocked her to the ground, sending the bat spiraling out of her fingers. The demon reared its oval and grinning mouth over her, its shriek like a the wheels of a car spinning ceaselessly against the concrete. She tried to burn it, but kept feeling the spark inside her die out before it could be lit. It bent down to swallow the twins, when an axe lodged into its head. A thick green and bitter smelling sludge poured from its open cranium and down onto Mabel’s sweater. The thing turned following source of it’s anguish.

  
“That’s right,” Wendy yelled, prying the axe from its head and jumping back into a clearing. “Come get me you big, ugly bugs.”

  
Mabel looked from the sludge on her sweater to the green stains on Wendy’s hands and shirt. “Wendy, what are you doing?”

  
“Buying the two of you some time to think of a plan together.” Then she grinned, freckles covered up by the smudges of dirt on her cheeks and a thick smear of demon blood. “I once fought a bear with a stick. This is nothing!” She slashed her axe again, this time taking one of the demon’s teeth.

  
Mabel’s breath felt stale in her chest, and the blood on her knees dribbled into the hem of her socks and onto her shoes. “Any ideas. Dipper?”

  
“Working on it,” he replied, trying to gain control of her body. For the first time, he realized he wasn’t used to not having his powers. There was a turn of the tide. He was more a demon now than anything else. He felt like he needed more time to readjust, time to think. But Wendy couldn’t hold those things off forever. “I don’t know! If I could use my powers, this would be so much easier.”

  
“Your powers, huh?” Mabel looked down at the blood oozing from her knees and into her socks. “Well, what if you can’t use them... but I can?”

  
_“What do you mean?”_

  
“I’m not really sure, but there’s only one way to find out.” Reaching down, she scooped some of her blood off of her legs with two fingers. She held it up and closed her eyes, trying to find a single moment of peace and focus in the midst of the screams of students, the fire alarm that someone must have pulled, the feeling of the mandobices lurking closer. Mabel let out her breath, “I give my blood in offering. Please take it and strengthen our possession, let me use your powers in your place.” She knew how strong he became when working under a deal, but this time she had to offer something more serious than pancakes. A piece of herself. 

  
_“No, Mabel! You could get hurt or worse. I’m against it. I'll figure something else out.”_

  
She stopped and swung the bat with the full arch of her body at one of the demons, disorienting it enough for her to make a hasty escape in the opposite direction. “No other choice, bro. Take the blood or we get eaten by giant millipedes--”

  
_“Centipedes.”_

  
“Whatever. I know possession is scary to you, and I’m sorry I pushed you into it. That was selfish. But please, help me out so we can kick the snot out of these guys.” The blood on her fingers was now dripping down her hands, leaving brown trails wherever it fell.

  
Dipper sighed, her offering was a good one. She was his twin sister after all, anything she offered would have been good. But there was something about the ringing of her blood in his being that suggested something more. Blood was the thing they shared with each other. He had to trust her. _“May I refer to the record that this was a bad idea."_  He gathered his focus.  _"Mabel Pines, I accept your offering._  NOW LET’S KILL THESE DEMONS.” When he spoke his voice curled out of Mabel’s mouth, a low growl that echoed across the white walls and lockers.

  
It was a funny feeling to share a body like that. Both twins felt themselves equally in control. Mabel tossed the glasses off of her face, revealing a pair of bright golden irises and black sclera. No point in hiding now. The blood that oozed from the scrapes on her knees turned bright gold.

  
She grinned, wiping the sweat and demon blood from her forehead. The mandobices had begun to corner Wendy, a few of them distracted by students trying to escape. “Hey demons!” She shouted, bracing her bat into position. The demons turned, rearing their widening mouths and teeth dripping with fresh human blood. Mabel waited until they pooled a few feet away from her, holding remarkably still. “DON'T MESS WITH ALCOR AND MIZAR!” She swung the back, the golden arch of flame that followed it larger than it had ever been before and sparkling as if tossing off firecrackers. It send the mandobices spiraling, skin burning away in thick flakes. They screeched in pain, wailing piercing against the sky. They hissed and wretched until there was nothing left but glimmering ash and a whole in the center of the high school hallway.

  
An eerie stillness passed over, anticipatory eyes waiting to make sure nothing in the crater would move.

  
Dipper blinked and took a step back, the power of Mabel's blood offering already weakening after such a display. “Woah… How are you better at this than me?”

  
“I know right?" she laughed. "I should have been the demon. Is it too late to trade?”

  
Off in the corner, Wendy groaned and staggered to her feet, the axe drooping in her hand. “Wendy!” the twins cried, rushing after her through the crowds of curious and terrified teenagers. 

  
Mabel reached out and helped her regain her footing. “Wendy! You were so cool! Like a demon hunter or something! You were like,” Mabel reenacted the fight by swinging her arms around and making dramatic sound effects. "And, oh my god, we would have been toast with out you distracting those demons! Like a demon hunter or something!” 

  
Wendy grinned to herself, panting for breath but still running off of the high adrenaline of the fight. “Demon hunting, huh? That sounds way more fun than college. Maybe I found my calling."

  
“D-demon hunting? I don’t like the sound of that,” Dipper replied.

  
“Aww come on,” Wendy wrapped an arm around their shoulder. “You gotta admit that was pretty kick ass. And then what you guys did! Man, I thought I was gonna go blind or something! We’d make a pretty good team, the three of us.”

"I suppose..." he said. 

  
“Yeah!” Mabel chimed. “See, Dipper! Like I told you. This was a good idea.” 

\------

Hours later, the twins took turns pushing the broom across the hallway, scooping up dirt, chips of tile, and flaked demon blood. “I told you this was a bad idea, now we both have detention. And you have to retake your math test. Why did I ever agree to this?” Dipper chided. Apparently, using a demon to take your test was against the school’s academic honesty policy. And then allowing that demon to attract other violent demons called for endangerment of the student body is considered a threat. Luckily, no one was severely injured, and Dipper was able to talk everyone down from calling the police and having them arrested. Or, well, he was able to toy around with their mindscapes to make them more understanding.

  
“What are you talking about? Today was awesome!” Mabel bounced up and down on their toes. “Did you even see how amazing we were? And besides, now school is canceled until the giant hole in the floor is fixed and everyone recovers from the trauma.”

  
“Mabel… what we did was terrifying. Do you even know what happened?”

  
“We killed a whole bunch of demons in a blaze of glorious flame?”

  
Dipper bit down on the bottom of their lip and momentarily rested their arms on the broom handle. “No, we brought both of our powers together. Or I guess Bill’s power. It wasn’t split in 2, it was full and realized. We vaporized those demons, Mabel. I’ve never been able to do that before and then it suddenly became so easy.”

  
“And what does that mean?”

  
“I don’t know yet, but nothing good.” He went back to sweeping, the dust pooling up in their face and leaving a chalky taste in their mouth in a dark brown mushroom cloud. 

  
“This really is worrying you, isn’t it?”

  
“Well, of course it is!" When he yelled, her voice strained. "I don’t know what Bill was up too, but this makes me worry that he might be trying to come back. Or that…”

  
Mabel interjected, tossing their arms out dramatically and throwing the broom. “For the final time! You’re nothing like Bill! And I’ll prove it. Did you have a good time today?”

  
“What? No! We got attacked and jeopardize the lives of hundreds of people.”

  
Mabel groaned and rolled her eyes. “No. Besides that. The regular school day. Without all the demon stuff.”

  
Dipper paused to think. “Yeah. I guess I did. It was nice to be human, really nice actually.”

  
“See? Bill would have thrown a hissy fit and started cramming forks into my arm or whispering universal secrets into people’s ears like ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg’. Information like that would absolutely throw me into insanity.”

  
Dipper laughed. “Alright, you got me there.” He picked up the broom, sweeping more of the dust into a corner. "But it doesn't change the fact that this is all really suspicious. Something is happening and I know it isn't coincidence." Then he stopped abruptly, and stared out at the hallways. “You know what? I want to enjoy my next nine hours and thirteen minutes. I’m not going to spend all of it sweeping up some mess.” With a snap of their fingers, using what bit of his energy remained to twist and turn reality, all the dust and debris folding in on itself until there was nothing left. “We should have some fun. After all, it’s not everyday you get to be human. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  
Mabel thought to herself. “Eating sugar burritos until we throw up?”

  
“Maybe something less repulsive… I was thinking going to the movies and buying only one ticket, even though there’s two of us? The new Tiger Fist movie is out.”

  
Both twins smiled at the same time. It was good to agree on something. “That sounds very human.”


	6. Temp Job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1 year and 3 months~ post Transcendence 
> 
> Mabel decides Dipper could use a little help with his summonings, and decides to go in his place as his temp. But she gets in a lot deeper than she expected, and discovers some new information along the way.

Mabel laid on her stomach, thumbing through another edition of Teen-Teen Magazine. She fluffed up the pillow that propped up her head and readjusted her position on the bed. A green glitter pen spun between her fingers. She tacked another line of green gel on the glossy paper. She pursed her lips, “This quiz is bogus! I’m definitely more of a Cleopatra than a Susan B Anthony!” She threw the magazine on the ground and rolled on her back. Waddles oinked from the floor and chewed on the corner of the magazine. “You said it, Waddles. This is so boring,” Mabel sighed.

She eyed the big summoning circle that remained etched into the wood floor for all of Dipper’s comings and goings. He had left that morning for “business” as he put it. This whole demon thing was starting to become like a job for him (Mabel watched him meticulously adjust his tie and check to make sure his teeth were still unnervingly sharp in the mirror before leaving). The summonings were starting to get more frequent, (“It’s to be expected,” he told her. “People are finally starting to recognize me as my own thing! Of course they’re going to test it out. I’m sure that after a while people will get bored of me and then everything can go back to normal.”) which left Mabel alone most afternoons and weekends. Candy and Grenda had after school activities and practices. Soos was usually busy with Melody now, and Wendy was off with her friends. The only thing Mabel could do was take stupid magazine quizzes, play Cat’s Cradle by herself, or work the gift shop with Stan.

It’s not like she could be angry with Dipper. Since the possession situation he’d stopped coming to school with her all the time. And the thing about being incorporeal is that all you can do is float around and wait for someone to summon you. Having to keep up with the whole demon thing would keep his mind off the, well, the whole demon thing. It usually stressed him out, being a demon usually meant meeting all the worst kinds of people in the world. The power-hungry, the violent, the manipulative, frat boys. There was no amount of candy or MonsterMon cards that could make up for the kinds of situations he kept being put in.

A bright light pinged beside her, casting a blue glow over the attic ceiling. Waddles squealed and scampered under the bed to hide. Mabel turned her head to see the summoning circle blinking in and out. Someone was trying to summon Dipper, except he wasn’t answering. He had gotten a lot of calls throughout the day. He must still be busy. He’d just have to let it go to voicemail.

“I wonder,” Mabel said to herself, leaping off the ground. If she could answer those calls, maybe Dipper could come home sooner. She looked at her hands, the pale blue light against the sparkly pink nail polish and smiley face bandaid. She could do magic. Dipper said that demonic flame was used in teleportation. Who was to say that she couldn’t use her powers to do all the same stuff?

She grabbed her backpack from under the bed, making sure to give Waddles a quick pat on the head. She stuffed it with really anything she thought she might need: grappling hook, candy, gel pens, notebook, copies of Teen-Teen Magazine (in case she got bored), and of course her trusty baseball bat.

She swung the bat over her shoulders. “Well Waddles, wish me luck! Let’s hope I don’t accidentally split open my insides or anything.” She stepped into the circle. The air inside was always tasteless and lacked any kind of temperature. She planted her feet firmly against the ground. Holding up one hand, she concentrated hard on the feeling of a flame bursting in the spaces between her fingers, running up and down her palm. A flicker of gold light sparked, contrasting against the blue glow of the circle. “Here goes!” she shouted. The flame blasted out from her hand, changing the summoning circle’s light from blue to pale gold. It roared in her ears, covering up the entirety of her vision.

When Mabel blinked, she was still inside the circle, but the circle was somewhere else entirely. It was definitely in a barn, the rank stench of manure and old wood wafted into her nose and stacks of hay rumbled from her impact. Her mouth was sour with the taste of stomach acid, but she was well passed the days of throwing up after teleporting. But she had done it  all on her own. Take that Dipper! 

“‘Scuse me?” a man said, sunburn and dirt on his face. He crossed his arms and scowled at her, a snarl escaping when he spoke. “Are you supposed to be the demon I was promised?”

Mable blinked. That’s right, people were expecting some sort of fighting creature. Not a 14 year old girl in a _Dream Boy High_ sweater. A silence crept through her mouth.

“Ye gonna answer me or not?” the man shouted.

Mabel shook her head and cleared her throat. “I’m uhhh,” she paused, eyes darting around the empty barn. “I’m Mizar, his temp! Alcor is busy at the moment, but your call is very important to us.” She slipped the backpack off her shoulders and scrambled for one of her notebooks and gel pens. “What demonic favor can we do for you, sir?”

He rubbed at the scruff on his chin. “Temp, huh?”

“Oh yes, there’s some big changes going on here! We’re under new management, the last demon who ran this joint is uh… well he’s no longer with us.” She smiled, and pressed the tip of her pen into the soft, clean notebook page.

“Ain’t you a little young to be a temp?”

“I teleported here, sir. We’re far beyond those kinds of questions.”

He nodded. “Alright, then. Well, all the neighbor kids keep sneakin’ into the barn at night to take the horses for a joyride. And now some of the horses are gettin’ loose or injured and I’m darn sick of it! I want someone to put a curse on my property so that those kids can’t keep comin’ in here!”

Mabel took some notes, mostly vague words like “horse” and “joyride” and “curse” followed up by many artistic renderings of horses. She tapped the pen on her bottom lip. “Would you like that curse malevolent or benign?”

“Benign,” he replied. “I don’t want no harm coming to those kids. But I want them to stay off my property.”

“We have a couple of offers right now. We have an attack scarecrow that will chase off any intruders. Or we can put a moat around the fence so the kids will fall in. Oh!” she scribbled something on her notebook. “How about a curse that prints HORSE STEALER on their foreheads for a week?”

He thought about that for a moment. “Can I have that scarecrow call their parents?”

“We’ll have to up your price, but it’s possible.”

“That’s right, so what’s my price at right now?”

Mabel reviewed her notes. “3 cases of Pit Cola, 20 candy bars, and rides on horses whenever we want-- with 24 hours advance notice, of course.” That seemed about equal with Dipper’s usual exchange rate. But it also seemed right somewhere in the back of her head, that the power in the soda and candy was equal to the amount of magic that it would take to curse a scarecrow.

“We?”

“Yes, this is a business. I do get benefits.”

“Fair enough.” He held out one hand, fingers crusted with dirt. “Sounds like a deal, missy.”

She took his hand, giving it a firm shake. She felt something deep inside her, not a compulsion or a joy. Something more like a putting a paper away in a filing cabinet or adding something else to a to do list. And somehow she knew that the information had been passed on to Dipper, like an email that he would open later. She had to resist all urges to remark on how cool it was.

She broke the handshake and scooped up her backpack. “Thank you for your business, sir. You can expect Alcor to come in the next 3 to 4 business days. No need to wait around, he’ll leave a note that he was here.” The summoning circle pinged again beneath her feet. “I have another customer on the line. I’ll have to let you go.” She summoned another flame, and felt herself lift into the inbetween of space and time.

\------

This temp job thing was much stranger than Mabel had expected. The guy with the horses was just a test run. She knew Dipper dealt with a lot of crazies, but she never exactly knew how crazy.

 _“_ Sorry ma’am, we don’t do cleaning services. Alcor is actually super messy and leaves his things all over the floor. And I won’t even tell you about when he last washed his clothes.”

“Nah, love potions aren’t in his domain. I can give you the number for a really good love god, though.”

“Infinite power and knowledge? Sorry, we have a waiting list going. You’ll be dead before we can get to you. I can offer you an encyclopedia set instead.”

“A cult? Pfft. Why would you wanna worship him? Let me tell you about the Lamby-Lamby dance, that will change your minds.”

It was no wonder that demons didn’t really eat, drink, or sleep. Mabel was already exhausted, and she had only been at it for a few hours. How did grown ups even have jobs? She answered her next call. The summoning took her to a living room with thin carpeting, a floral printed couch with plastic over it, and lacy curtains. An old lady stood in front of the summoning circle, gripping to her cane. Her slippers shuffled against the carpet when she moved. The air even smelled like old lady.

Mabel grinned, “Aww! You’re such a cute, little old lady! Your hair looks like silver cotton candy.”

She raised her cane and prodded Mabel in the gut, “What kind of joke is this supposed to be!” she shouted. “Why are you taking the form of an obnoxious little girl? That's a pathetic trick!" 

Mabel clutched to her stomach and batted the cane away. “Hey! I’m charming!” she whined. “And Alcor is very busy right now. I’m his temp, Mizar. What can I help you with?"

The old lady scoffed, "Ha! As if I would accept your assistance. Go away, leave me." 

"Can you at least tell me what you need? I can leave a message for him." 

The old lady frown and shuffled her way over to the window and pulled back the curtain. “My cat, Sprinkles, is stuck in this tree. I want Alcor to get him down.”

“Awww,” Mabel cooed and pressed her face up against the glass. “I love cats! I can get him down for you!”

“No,” the old lady smacked her with the cane again. “It has to be Alcor! I don’t want you doing it…” she raised an eyebrow. “Who did you say you were again?”

“Mizar.”

The old lady grinned, as if she had finally put the whole thing together. “Ahhh. Mizar. Yes, the temp.” Her thin lips spread wide when she spoke. She rubbed her hands together in menacing circles. “Are you close to him? Alcor? If something happened to you, he would not hesitate to come for you?" 

Mabel shrugged. “Uh yeah, duh.”

“Hmmm. Alright. In that case, I will let you get my cat out of the tree.”

Mabel tossed her backpack to the ground, whipped out her trusty grappling hook, and walked out the front door, followed by the old lady. The cat stared at her from the top of the tree in the center of the lawn, with big black and hollow eyes. It dug its claws into the thin branch of the tree, as if waiting for something. “Don’t worry!” Mabel called up into the turning fall leaves. “I’ll get you down!” She aimed her grappling hook up at the thicked branch of the tree and pressed the trigger, sending the hook and cord to spiral through the air. Latching onto the tree she scaled herself upwards into the thick.

The cat stared at her, a slight curl to its mouth and whiskers. It’s black body arched like the peak of a mountain, revealing a white patch on its stomach. “Aww, hi kitty,” she cooed, bracing her feet against the trunk of the tree and reaching out with one hand. “It’s okay, I’m not gonna--” the cat hissed and clawed at her hand, leaving thin ribbons of blood behind. It’s hollow eyes stared into her, as its snarling mouth grew larger in size along with the rest of its body. Spikes tore through its back and its teeth turned to fine needles. Smoke rose from its huffing nostrils.

The cat dug its needle teeth into her sweater, yanking her away from the tree and shaking her like a rag doll. The hot smoke burned the back of her neck. “Careful, Sprinkles,” the old woman called. “She’ll make much better bait. We want her alive for now.” The tree transformed itself into a steel cage, with salt circles surrounding it and dozens of pentagrams etched into the bars that were barely half of Mabel’s height, making her crouch down. 

“Bait? What do you mean? Who are you?” she asked, gripping her hands around the bars. Hot tears welled up in her eyes, though she refused to let them fall. All she had to do was hold still and wait, right? Dipper would eventually come for her. Right?

The old woman snickered, though now she was starting to look less like a sweet old lady and more like a super villain, body morphing into a new shape. “I am Basta. Demon of deceit, illusion maker, also crazy cat lady. And you've met my familiar, Sprinkles." Sprinkles purred at the notion of being mentioned. 

Mabel huffed, tricked by cats. She was so easily blinded by love. “What do you want with me?”

“Aww you think you’re so important.” She snapped her fingers, summoning a golden cat throne to appear behind her as she sat. Her purple eyes scanned the scene. “This trap was originally not meant for you, but I think this plan is much better. Alcor will eventually learn his dear Mizar is missing.  When he arrives here, he’ll have to decide. His life... or yours! His pesky human emotions will get the better of him, and I will win the bet over who kills him first!” She cackled, a real evil villain laugh from Saturday morning cartoons. “I am so evil. Good job me.”

“A bet? What is it with everyone wanting to kill him? He hasn’t done anything!” First Metus, now Basta? What? Did these guys have weekly tea parties to talk about their worst enemies or something?

Basta examined her manicured claws. “I don’t expect you to know much about demon culture. We like to keep our bloodlines pure. We don’t like things that are different. And your Alcor is very different. Half-breeds have a tendency to break the laws of demonhood. We have to kill the weed before it grows too strong. What I wouldn't give to see the moral plane covered in his golden blood!" 

While Basta spoke, Mabel tried to reach for her backpack, dropped not too far from where her cage rested. “Too strong?”

“Like I would tell you what that means,” Basta scoffed. She looked down at Mabel, with her body pressed up against the bars of the cage, arm extended and fingers just touching the strap of her backpack. Snapping her fingers, Basta summoned the backpack to her side. “Can’t have you getting into this. What’s in here anyway?” She carelessly tossed out Mabel’s notebook and baseball bat onto the ground.

“Hey! I know you’re a demon, but that’s pretty rude,” Mabel said.

Basta paused and looked into the backpack. “Is this… Teen-Teen Magazine! I haven’t read a good magazine in so long. I may be 1,456,236,781 years old, but I still have the heart of a teenager!” She kicked her feet up onto the throne and flipped to the inside of the magazine. “Whose Reincarnation Are You quiz on page 17. I do like mindless magazine quizzes.” She grabbed one of the glitter pens from Mabel's backpack and tacked off her answers.

Mabel scrambled about the inside of her cage. This was bad news. She couldn't summon Dipper for help. Even if she begged and pleaded with him, he would give himself over to Basta with out question. And the cage was protected with different pentagrams to keep demons inside, if he did come he would be trapped instantly… except she wasn’t a demon. A salt circle wouldn’t work on her, nor would any kind of binding circle. There was nothing keeping her inside the cage. An idea hatched in her head. She summoned a tiny flame on top of her finger and etched the framework a small summoning circle into the bottom of the cage.

“What is this!” Basta screamed. “Mother Theresa! That couldn’t be more wrong! I am most definitely Elizabeth Bathory!”

“Tell me about it,” Mabel chucked, continuing to etch her circle. “These quizzes are so artificial they could never capture someone with a personality as wonderful as yours.” Sprinkles meowed loudly at Basta, taking note of the circle starting to form at the bottom of the cage. Mabel put a finger to her lips and shushed it.

“I know! I am wonderful aren't I?” Basta huffed and leaned back in her chair. She licked her finger and turned the page. “Oh! Top ten cutest cats photos. I like that.”

“You should keep reading,” Mabel suggested. “I packed a whole bunch of magazines! You definitely won’t be distracted. I’ll just be over here, watching your evil plan unfold.”

“You are absolutely right!” Basta shifted her attention back to the magazines.

Mabel finished off her summoning circle, and positioned herself neatly over it. Sprinkles hissed and whined at Basta, who merely dismissed him with a wave of her hand and a tack of her pen against the paper. Mabel pressed her hands up against her tiny summoning circle. It burned a soft gold, casting shadows across her face. It was a lot smaller than what she was used to, and she had only been teleporting to answer summonings, but it would have to do for now. She closed her eyes and focused all her energy on trying to move her body out of the cage and into the summoning circle that originally brought her there. Sprinkles whines pierced her ears and the huddled position she was in made her back hurt. But she didn’t break her concentration. The golden flame encased her, warm to the touch, and when she opened her eyes she found herself inside the house she was originally summoned into.

“Haha! Yes!” She leapt out of the summoning circle and pressed her face up against the window. Sprinkles peered into the cage, whiskers arched in confusion while Basta remained absorbed in her quiz.  

Moving towards the door, Mabel crept out of the house. Next step was retrieving her baseball bat. She moved around the front of the house, crawling on her hands and knees up to where her baseball bat lay abandoned in the grass next to Basta’s feet. Mabel inched her way forward, hoping that she would be quiet enough and that Basta would be distracted enough for her to reach the bat in time.

“What!” Basta shouted, sending the of Teen-Teen Magazine up in purple flames. “Sir James is a much cuter cat than Mittens! Look at his little paws!” She looked over to the cage, waiting for a response only to find it empty and Sprinkles pawing at it. Basta leapt from her chair, purple flames licking around her fingers. “Where is she! Sprinkles, what have you done, you worthless feline?” Sprinkles whimpered in shame, curling into a ball.

“Hey, crazy cat lady!” Mabel shouted, tapping her baseball bat against her hand. “Sorry to tell you that your trap only works on demons, and I’m no demon.” The bat burst into flames as she bore her teeth in a grin.

“Why you!” Basta hurled herself at Mabel, a purple fiery rage encompassing her. Mabel took a swing with her bat, puncturing the nails right into Basta’s gut. Reeling back in pain, Basta snarled over to Sprinkles. “What do you think you’re doing? Attack her!” Sprinkles covered and covered his head with his paws.

“You know, for a cat lady, you’re not so nice to your cat. Sprinkles deserves better!” Mabel took another crack at Basta’s head, letting the rusty nails sink deep into her skull, the knowing full well her attacks wouldn’t do any real damage but that they would be enough distract Basta so she could escape.

Basta roared, replacing what should have been her flesh with more of the flashing purple flame, eyes set deep inside. She stretched upwards, her enormous body now towering over Mabel. “That’s it! I’ll kill you too! I’ll vaporize you out of existence!” She picked Mabel up between her thumb and forefinger, flames burning away at her sweater and exposed skin, and squeezed as if Mabel were a blueberry. Mabel screamed and cried, trying to summon her own flames into a barrier around her body only to watch them be smothered out. The tears evaporated off of her face. The air smelled like burning flesh and hair.

Something growled behind Basta, a low and hollow sound that echoed across the now disheveled reality. Basta looked over her shoulder just in time to see Sprinkles leap through the air and catch her between his needle teeth. In her surprise, she dropped Mabel to ground with a clatter. He shook her around, her limbs flinging through the air.

Mabel staggered to her feet, trying to ignore the numbing pain of her burns. She darted to the cage, opening up the lock and holding it open. “Hey, Sprinkles! I think it’s time Basta had a timeout! What do you think?” His dark eyes looked over to the cage, and trotted over, spitting Basta out inside. Mabel slammed the door shut, being sure to melt the lock with her flames. “Ha! Take that!” She laughed as Sprinkles purred with satisfaction.

“No!” Basta shrieked, slamming her hands against the bars. “I will get out of here and wreak my vengeance upon you!”

“I’m sure you will,” Mabel replied. And then she leaned in until her brown eyes met Basta’s purple. “But I want you to take this as a warning. Don’t underestimate us. I’m human and I beat you. Alcor is both human and demon. You’re afraid of him. And you should be. Be afraid of both of us.” She turned away, gathering all of her things back up into her backpack. She carried it in her left hand, her back being too scorched to handle it. She looked to the massive monster cat sitting beside the cage, “You’re free to go, Sprinkles. I’d take you home with me, but I think you’d scare my pig.” He nodded with closed eyes and scampered off, turning back into a small house cat.

She stared back into Basta’s cage, the demon trying to gnaw her way out of the bars. “This is your last chance. If you leave Alcor and I alone, we will leave you alone too.”

“Never,” she hissed.

“Then you leave us no choice. We’ll keep getting stronger, and we will keep beating you.” Mabel stood up straight and smiled with flushing cheeks. “It was a pleasure doing business with you. Please call again if you want your butt kicked a second time.”

With that, Mabel stomped her foot against the summoning circle, disappearing completely.

 

\------

 

Mabel landed back in the bedroom, immediately falling over onto the floor. She rolled over onto her back, feeling the ache of where Basta tried to burn her, but also relieved to know all of her flesh was still intact even if her _Dream Boy High_ sweater was not. This demon stuff was really exhausting, not to mention almost deadly.

The summoning circle lit up blue, though blurry through her weak and watery vision. Dipper ruptured from the flames, dropping to her side on the floor. He spoke faster than she could comprehend, but she didn’t know if was a him thing or a demon thing. “Oh man, Mabel! What happened? I-I couldn’t see you! Did something attack you? Was it another demon? Oh no, you’rehurt. I think I can heal you! Just hold still!” He gingerly scooped her up into his arms. His body felt strange against hers; she knew he was there but she could only feel the memory of him on her skin. His hand pressed a hand against her back, a hum echoing from the soft blue light. Relief swelled through her, it was as if he were brushing sand off of her skin or wiping away dirt.

She peered up at him and chuckled. He looked worse than she did, well a different kind of worse. A cut dashed across his forehead where his birthmark was, golden blood streaming from it. The edges of his suit were torn and bright white feathers stuck out from from his air and the back of his collar. His wings dropped to his sides like wilted flowers. “You don’t look so hot either,” she commented.

He rolled his eyes. “When I lost sight of you, I went looking all over for where you might be. I ran into some problems along the way. Demon chickens and such.”

“Yeah, well," she sat upright, stretching out her newly healed body. "I kind of ran into a demon named Basta. Her domain is illusions and deceit… also cats. She was going to trick you and kill you, but I ran into her first when I was trying to fill in for you.”

“About that, what on earth were you thinking? Trying to be my temp? Mabel, the only reason I’m not dead is because I’m immortal! You’re just lucky you can use demonic flame or you’d be a pile of ashes right now!”

She laughed again, “You sound like mom.”

Dipper’s look of wide eyed concern turned into a stark frown. “Someone has to! You’re becoming more reckless than I am.” 

“It’s a good thing I did go! If I hadn’t gone in your place, Basta would have killed you! She laid a trap specifically for you and everything. I escaped because I was human, but you... “ She paused a moment to reorganize her thoughts. “Dipper, there are demons from all over trying to kill you. They’re scared of you… Basta said they had to 'kill the weed before it grows too strong'. It was really spooky." 

“Really?” His concern faded away, eyes coming light and expression widening. She could see all the gears turning in his head. “I-” And then he stopped. “That’s not my primary concern. If demons want to come kill me, that’s fine. But it means more and more demons will be in Gravity Falls. And they’ll be looking for you too. We need to lay low. Set up precautions.”

“A precaution would be getting better at your powers. If they don't want you getting stronger than that's what you need to do!" 

He shook his head. “No. If I get stronger it will just lure them here faster… I’ll just… I’ll find a way to protect the town. I’ll make a full scale unicorn spell or something. I’ll stop answering any suspicious summonings… I’ll…” he stopped talking for a moment when he noticed she was still staring at him. She watched the revelation pull into his expression. “I’ll find a way to reverse the Transcendence. That way everyone stays safe and everything goes back to normal.”

Mabel shook her head, rubbing at the sore parts of her back. “Dipper..."

"That's it that's what I have to do. I can't spend the rest of eternity like this. I can't spend the rest of my life without..." he caught himself in the middle of his words, looking to Mabel. "You know what never mind." 

"What is it?" 

"I said never mind." He stood up off the floor, not making a sound against the creaky floors. "I need to clear my head. There's a lot of information dropping into my brain right now. I need to spend some time in the mindscape." He looked over his shoulder at her, "Thanks for trying to help me today. You could have died, but you did awesome. I'll be a complete mess without you." And then he left, leaving only Mabel and the bedroom. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basta is the immortal spirit of Eartha Kitt and I adore her.


	7. Epistemology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An origin story

Come to think of it, he should have known better than to do it.

In the days that followed Weirdmageddon, Dipper couldn’t shake the voice in the back of his head that kept telling him to take a nice long walk in the woods with the potential of never returning. He assumed it was just homesickness about leaving Gravity Falls… or was it away-sickness? Was there a sickness for leaving some place that wasn’t your home but you wished was? Either way, he couldn’t knock the feeling either that something was definitely wrong.

His next trigger should have been the sleepwalking. At some point in the night, he would crawl out of bed and drag himself towards the bedroom door. He retained no memories of these happenings. Ford caught him on the first night, trying to make his way down the stairs but being too drowsy with sleep to make it down without stumbling. He simply picked Dipper up, tucked him back into bed, and left. “A little sleepwalking is no issue,” Ford said the next morning. “It’s common in children your age, and we’ve had a stressful few days. Odd behavior is to be expected.”

The second night, Mabel caught him, creaking the door open and making his way to the stairs. She got out of bed and tried to beckon him back, grabbing onto his hand to lead him in the right direction. He jerked his hand away and pushed her back onto the unfinished wood floors. Mabel retaliated by grabbing him around the waist and dragging him back into bed despite his best efforts to thrash and kick.

Then there were the dizzy spells where the world seemed to flicker in and out of a delusional gray-scale. Everything altered itself slightly to the right, as if misprinted on paper or poorly traced. One minute he was fine, and the next he’d find himself on the floor, trying to focus his eyes back on a tangible reality.

Mabel insisted that he see a doctor. “I’m fine,” Dipper said on the last morning of his usual life, knowing he wasn’t really fine at all. “I think I just need some fresh air. I’ll go for a walk or something.”

“I’m going with you,” Mabel declared, jumping up from the kitchen table, nearly knocking over her glass of orange juice.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” he replied, poking at his pancakes with a fork. They smelled like warm silky butter, and yet he wasn’t all that hungry.

“Both of you need to get some time outside,” Stan said, dropping some pancakes onto his own plate. After the whole memory wipe incident, Stan was remembering his cooking skills, which mostly involved making pancakes and frying up brown meat. The memory eraser ray hadn’t hit him nearly as hard as they thought. His memories had returned with remarkable speed. Dipper felt it was almost too easy. “You’ve spent way too long cooped up in the house. Go play or solve a mystery or something. It’ll be good for ya’.”

“Yes!” Mabel fist bumped in the air. “Mystery hunt!”

“Alright. Mystery hunt,” Dipper replied, slipping out of his chair, leaving half of his pancakes uneaten.

Mabel crammed the rest of the pancakes in her mouth and bounded after him, as he stepped out onto the porch and into the grass. “So what brings us on this next adventure to the great outdoors?”

He didn’t actually know why he wanted to go out into the woods. It was some subconscious desire he couldn’t put a finger on. Maybe he left something out there and he just forgot what it was. Whatever it was, the paranoia was probably the reason why he was crawling out of bed in the middle of the night. The lack of REM sleep was definitely the thing making him dizzy, and in turn the dizzy spells were affecting his appetite. Theory: going outside would cure him of all his ailments.

“Don’t know,” Dipper said. “All I know is that I have this voice in my head that’s telling me to go out into the woods and… well, I’m not sure why.”

“That sounds kinda creepy. And what do you mean a voice inside your head? Do you have another, cooler, more fun personality I should know about?”

“Hey! I’m cool,” he retorted. “But having you here at least means that I’ve got someone watching my back in case something goes wrong or I pass out again.” The grass folded neatly underneath his shoes as he followed whatever direction he felt he needed to. It was like a string had been tied around the tree trunks and he was merely following it.

“Aww. I wanted to take the lead on this mystery hunt.”

“Next time.”

He kept walking, the sun slapping down on his cheeks and nose, probably burning them a crisp red. Mabel talked on about what her choice of adventure might be, “We haven’t been to the fairy land yet. Though last time I saw a fairy I waved hello and she bit me on the finger for no reason! So maybe no fairies. Oh what about--” Dipper halted in his tracks, Mabel ramming into his back. “What the hey-hey, bro-bro?”

He didn’t answer. He felt that if he opened his mouth to speak he might throw up. Something kept pushing him forward, trying to puppeteer his legs to take another step, pulling strings to make him move. But his logic told him to run. To get back to the Shack and bunker himself down with every weapon imaginable until it was time to go home to Piedmont. In the clearing of soft grass and wet wood, sat the stone image of Bill Cipher. He had been lured there.

Something was definitely wrong. He felt himself take another step, though he desperately didn’t want to.

“Dipper. This isn’t funny.” Mabel said, eyeing the statue. He kept walking forward, not saying anything. She wrapped her hands around his wrist and tugged him back, digging her heels into the soft dirt and grass. His skin felt cold to the touch. “We need to go!” She put it together before he did. The sleepwalking, the fainting. Bill was trying to possess Dipper again. “Bill is messing with your head! Don’t let him!”

He pressed his free hand to her chest and tried to push her away, though Mabel stuck on, pulling to the point where she swore she dislocated his shoulder. “Dip! You have to fight him off!”

Dipper was trying. He knew he was in his own body and that all he had to do was to stop and let Mabel tackle him to the ground, but he just couldn’t. He was hyper aware of every sensation running through him. Mabel’s sweaty palms chafing against his wrist, the dull pinch in his shoulder, the dew on the grass leaking against his socks, the sharp smell of bark, the tug in his legs to keep moving forward. There was no stopping it.

He looked over his shoulder at her, maybe to say _I’m sorry._ But her eyes met his, and that soft shade of brown was the most beautiful color he had ever seen. And there was a determination to his gaze, the set to his jaw. “I won’t let you win,” he muttered.

His fingers grazed the statue and everything turned white. He knocked back into Mabel, the blast flinging both of them into the dirt. A crater opened up from the blast, over turning the earth into a deep pit, the twins caught inside. 

Mabel’s ears rung with a high-pitched whine. Her vision blurred around, like she was looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. Her body felt tied up in knots, like balls of yarn that had intertwined with each other. Every motion was followed by a foreign body sensation. She reached for Dipper, barely able to crawl across the grass. He was still, _very still_. Definitely not breathing. She tried to grab him, but swore her fingers passed right through.

“You gotta stay with me, Dip,” she muttered. Her vision still wouldn’t focus. “Whatever Bill is doing, don’t let him. We’ll beat him again…” This time her palm laid flat against his arm.

She passed out.

 

Dipper opened his eyes to the hazy world… was it black and white? Mabel’s face lurched into his view, breaking up the monochrome with flashes of pink sweater and brunette hair. Her voice echoed, broken up like static through a radio, though her lips never moved. _Waking up... Almost a day… Is he dying?... Worried… Bill. It had to be Bill._

“Mabel? What are you saying?” he muttered. His head pounded, like his brain was trying to escape from his skull. Sweat stuck to his chest and face, matting down his hair and clothes. Wow, it was hot. It had to be the pile of blankets (4) that Mabel clearly laid on top of him. Trying to make him sweat out the fever. But it was a different kind of hot, like it was coming from inside him.

“I didn’t say anything,” she replied. She scooted up onto the bed next to him, brown eyes examining him. “You really scared me. I thought you weren't gonna wake up. Your breathing was so shallow that it looked like you weren't breathing at all and you just looked dead and..." (Dead: no. Breathing: also no.) 

"Wasn't I asleep for almost a day?" he asked. He tried to move his fingers, trying to get a sense of his own body. Wanting to move his arms and back to sit up, but momentarily being unable to find them. How could that be? It was his body, why did he feel so lost? It took a second of concentration to remember where his hands were supposed to be in relation to his arms, which was in relation to his neck and torso, as if summoning them back. He pushed himself upright, a cool waft of air pressing against his sweat drenched shirt. If he felt terrible, he didn’t want to know what he looked like.

“Yeah,” Mabel bit her bottom lip. “How do you know that?”

“I thought I heard you say it. But I guess I was dreaming.”

Mabel pursed her lips and lowered her center of gravity into the bed. “I’m worried. Something is happening to you." 

He shrugged, “Or I’ve just been really, really sick.” (Sick is for humans. This is a transformation.) What was that thing in his head? When it spoke it felt like someone was dropping bricks on his head. 

“No… I fell unconscious too. Apparently Stan and Ford saw the blast and found us in the woods. I woke up a little bit after that. I felt terrible, like I had a fever. It got really, really bad for a moment and then just stopped. I think I threw up glitter.”

“Well, that’s normal for you.”

“Okay, yeah,” she admitted. “But then I had all these bad dreams about you, everything was on fire and you had this horrible eyes... It feels like my head is spinning when I look at you.” Her fingers gripped one of the blankets on the bed. When he looked close, he could see every detail on her face. The glimmer of sweat on her temples, the chapped once-bleeding skin on her lips, the literal puffs of air from her breathing. “I think it might be…” (Bill).

“Bill,” he asked, mostly because the voice in his head told him to.

“Yes.”

The door creaked open, Stan and Ford creaking back in. Stan grinned, “Hey! Sleeping Beauty woke up-- okay, not beauty. You look like you got hit by a bus.”

Ford elbowed Stan in the ribs with disapproval. “Your condition must be more severe than I originally thought. The good news is that I am also a physician, amongst my other medical achievements. How are you feeling, Dipper?”

“Like someone decided to play kickball with my brain, and then when they were done to disassemble the rest of my body parts, catalogue them for an academic journal, and then put me back together-- except really out of order. Toes for fingers, intestines wrapped around my neck like a scarf. That kind of deal.” Yikes. That was pretty detailed, even for him. “But I’m sure it’s just a fever,” he covered.

“Well, let’s see.” Ford pulled up a chair to the bedside. He placed a hand on Dipper’s forehead, but before he could say anything more, he jerked his hand away and winced, like touching a hot stove.

“Ah! Grunkle Ford, are you okay?” Dipper screamed. 

He winced, clutching to his hand. “Yes, but, you are literally hot to the touch.”

“Am I? I guess I do feel warm, but I didn’t think I was that warm.” (Your temperature is rising by 2.75 degrees Fahrenheit every hour. Currently at 158.5 degrees Fahrenheit.) (Almost hot enough to cause severe burns on human skin.)

Ford examined the red coloring to his fingers, as Mabel reached out for Dipper with no reservation. She placed her hand against his cheek, flushed a deep pink, and held it there. “Are you sure, Grunkle Ford? He’s just regular warm to me.”

Stan rubbed at the back of his neck. “Well, crap. I don’t know how I can possibly send you home to your parents, being so sick… or whatever this is.” (You’re never going home again.)

Dipper felt his stomach turn, “Me either.”

“What happened to you out there anyway?” Ford asked, pressing his elbows into his knees. “There was this big flash of Weirdmageddon like light and next thing I know we’re carrying both of you home.”

Dipper and Mabel shared a glance. She shrugged and looked away, kicking her feet idly up and down against the bed.

Stan leaned in, as if to interrogate his nephew. “Something did happen. Didn’t it?”

“Oh man…”

“You have to tell us, Dipper,” Ford said. “It’s the only way to fix this.” (Chance of fixing it: .00000002%)

Dipper swallowed. His mouth tasted like blood and sweat. “I think… or we think Bill was trying to come back. That he was the whole reason I got sick in the first place. Maybe he made me more sick. Either way, he must have wanted me as a vessel. Which would explain the sleepwalking, the dizzy spells, walking out into the woods… Yup. That checks all the boxes for repossession.”

Stan raised an eyebrow, “Repossession?”

“Yeah, you know, it’s a type of action in which the party having right of ownership of the property in question takes the property back from the party having right of possession without invoking court proceedings. Except in this case I am the property, Bill still had some ownership of because of a deal I, stupidly, didn’t break and he could technically reclaim the property, me, without any kind of consent.” Each drip of information rolled easily off his tongue, as if rehearsed. 

Stan shook his head, “What? No! I mean, when were you possessed in the first place? You kids never tell me anything. And since when do you know anything about jurisdictions or property law?”

“Oh,” Dipper paused. “That’s weird… I actually don’t know anything about property law.”

“Dipper,” Ford said, “this is serious. If this has any connection with Bill, the whole family is in danger. We need to figure out how to stop Bill immediately.”

(It’s a little late for that. Bill’s dead, or as dead as a demon can get.) (You're the danger now, kid.) Would that voice in his head shut up? 

“I’m willing to try anything.”

 

Try anything really did mean try anything. Another unicorn hair spell was set up except for the fact that once it was set up, Dipper couldn't help but scream in pain, as if something were trying to bash his skull in with a crowbar. Ford suggested Dipper try Project Mentum a second time, but once he made contact with the helmet, his thoughts raced so fast the machine couldn’t keep up before going up in blue flames. Various spells and potions were tried, and most of them just made him feel dizzy or throw up. As things got more desperate so did their suggestions. Mabel offered to beat the snot out of him, like the last time he got possessed. Ford became convinced that he should put a metal plate in Dipper’s head, it was the only way to completely prevent possession. Stan drew the line there, though Dipper was honestly all for it.

And as time progressed, so did his unfortunate condition. His temperature rose at an alarming rate (438 degrees Fahrenheit, they had to use a welding thermometer to take his temperature), though somehow, the blankets or bed frame never caught fire or overheated. Not to mention the newer symptoms, complete lack of appetite, inability to sleep, fingertips starting to turn pitch black. And then there were the intense and insufferable pains that arched through his bones and skin as if his body were trying to tear itself apart. It became almost impossible to think about anything but the pain. 

Mabel was the only person who could attempt to take care of him, because she was the only person who could touch him without being burned. He couldn’t figure out why, the little voice in his head that told him things was quiet about that mystery.

She folded a handful of ice chips into a wet rag, and placed it against his forehead, though the ice immediately melted and turned to steam when it made contact with his skin. Mabel sighed, and folded another hand full of ice into the rag.

“You recognize that’s not working,” he said, not opening his eyes to look at her. “I can’t really cool down, and if I could, it would take something more powerful than ice.”

She pressed the rag to his head again, brushing the wet curls hair out of his face. The cool water managed to trail down his cheeks for a moment before completely evaporating. “I don't know what else to do. You're in pain and I can't stop it." Pulling the rag away from his forehead, she abandoned it in the bowl of ice chips. 

Dipper shrugged, a more casual tone slipping into his voice. "You could kill me... yeah, that would still work." He still didn't look at her. 

"Dipper!" Mabel scolded, a look of horror slapped on her face. 

"What?" he asked, as if his suggestion was a completely normal thing to say to someone. 

"No. No. No. That is not an option. You're going to be fine, okay?" (Fine is a subjective term.) 

Footsteps creaked up into the bedroom. Mabel jerked around, afraid that someone had heard their conversation. Ford appeared in the doorway, “Mabel, I’m afraid you may need to stay here alone with Dipper for a few hours. Something strange is happening that Stan and I need to look into before it gets worse, we’re worried it may have to do with you, Dipper. Do you think you’ll be okay?”

“What’s going on?” she asked. 

Ford pulled up the hologram on his watch, an image of the earth spinning around, with little red dots multiplying on it, filling almost every conceivable space on the globe. “Each of these little dots is an anomaly, much like the kind here in Gravity Falls, they’re multiplying. Reports coming it from all over the world about monsters, spirits, everything you can imagine and more. Some sort of alter-average transcendence. The fact that it aligns with Dipper is no coincidence.”

“The magnetic pole flipped,” Dipper muttered, intentionally straining his voice, as if he were trying to do a bad impression of himself.

“What?” Ford asked.

“You know how Gravity Falls is a weirdness magnet and draws in every strange and unusual thing to its borders? The magnetic pole flipped and instead of drawing weirdness in, it’s pushing all the weird energy out into the world. It’s inviting the strange and usual to come out of hiding.” He paused in thought. “Next report will be about vampires in Seattle, because where else would vampires hang out? Then a small town in Taiwan will report that a pair of chattering teeth and mouth, with no lips attached, destroyed their crops and killed anything in its path.”

At that moment, Stan barreled up the stairs, the sound of the TV faintly crackling behind him (Channel 6 News, yet another Emergency Broadcast). “Seattle this time. Vampires or something. I think we may be getting in over our heads here, Sixer. And we can’t leave when the kid is so-- did I miss something important here?”

Ford’s jaw dropped and looked to Dipper. “How did you know that?”

“Because it’s my fault. I wasn’t strong enough to fight back.”

Mabel shook her head. “Dipper that’s crazy--” Dipper opened his eyes, but what Mabel saw weren’t his usual brown eyes. No, these eyes were a pure shimmering gold in the iris, surrounded by a pitch black emptiness that suggested no depth or emotion to his expression. Mabel didn't mean to, but she recoiled from him. 

He ground his teeth when he spoke, each tooth seeming to sharpen into a dull little fangs and his voice pierced and echoed. “I just figured it out. It’s so obvious.” The truth tasted sour, or maybe that was the pool of golden blood that spilled into his mouth when he bit down too hard on his bottom lip. “I think I’m becoming a demon.”

 

Mabel eased up into the attic, balancing a bowl of soup in her hands. Dipper expected her to be tired, but despite all she slept remarkably well at night, dozing off the moment Dipper insist she get some sleep, and waking up precisely after 3 REM cycles. But her positivity remained, in fact it doubled, as if she were trying to be happy for him. “I brought you some dinner!” she chimed. “I made a yummy bowl of Mabel soup!”

“That sounds terrible,” he groaned. Meanwhile, he was wondering why he couldn’t feel the bed underneath him or the clothes on his back.

“It’s good for you! It’s just a can of chicken noodle soup with a bunch of crushed up vitamins in it!”

“Okay. 1.) That’s gross 2.) You recognize that I am beyond the help of multivitamins, right?  3.) I haven’t eaten anything in literally 3 days, what makes you think I will… do you eat or drink soup? Wait never mind, you eat it and then drink the liquid remains. But I’m not going to do that. And 4.) Demons don’t eat human food. We eat souls and other nasty things.”

She sat down at the chair that was perpetually pulled up to his bedside. “But _you_ eat soup! Because your sister made it for you. Right?”

“No.”

“Please!” she begged. She held it up to his face so the steam could slap against his skin. It did smell good, up until the faint powdery smell of the crushed up multivitamins. “I am offering you this bowl of soup and you are gonna eat it because it will make you feel better.”

Something snapped against his brain like a rubber band. (Take it. You have to take it.) Come to think of it, he wasn’t hungry, but he felt this want. An instinct that suddenly made him feel sharp and alert. He pushed himself upright in bed, and took the bowl from Mabel. “Fine, I’ll do it.” He ate the first spoonful nervously, but it settled nicely. The ache in his bones lessened some, the material being of his body resorted back to a neutral state. He crammed another spoonful in. The multivitamins tasted terrible, he knew that, but it didn’t bother him at all. He just kept eating it.

“Yay!” Mabel grinned. “This is great! See? I told you it would make you feel better. You were just hungry.”  

“Mmm not quite,” he said between spoonfuls, “but sorta. I was immaterial.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, I think I’m exiting the physical plane. But food is material, so when I eat it, I take on those qualities.” He finished off the bowl faster than he thought humanly possible, but that wasn’t worth questioning anymore. “Don’t get me wrong, I still feel horrible. But I feel a slightly less horrible. Eating will probably stall the demonic transformation process a little longer.”

“Does that mean you want more?”

He shrugged, already scraping the sides of an empty bowl. “It means I’ll eat more. But the word offer is key here. I can only eat what you offer me. And please keep the multi-vitamins out of it. It’s got a funny texture.”

She took the empty bowl from him. “Whatever you say, dorkus.”

 

Stan had come upstairs to keep him company while Mabel got some hard earned rest. Stan brought some welding gloves with, so that he could have what little physical contact remained possible with his nephew. He dragged his hand across Dipper's forehead and over his hair. And it was strange. Dipper never knew Stan to be sensitive in any aspect, and least of all, gentle. But it was comforting, to be able to focus on Stan instead of how pathetic he felt writing in a pain he didn't understand. Stan was the first to speak between the two of them, his voice low and gruff. "This is my fault. If I hadn't let you kids come stay with me, none of this would have happened. Things would have been how they always were." 

"No, Stan. It's not your fault." Dipper muttered, focusing on making his voice sound as normal as possible. "Coming to Gravity Falls was a good thing. I wouldn't change anything about it, sure we almost died every other day, but it was worth it to spend the summer with you and Mabel. Bill can do whatever he wants to me and it won't change that fact." 

Stan gave him a little nudge on the shoulder, the faint outline of a smile creeping onto his mouth. "You're a tough kid. You just gotta tough it out a little longer, okay?" 

Dipper latched on to Stan's hand, the claws forming at the end of his fingers catching onto the gloves. "Okay." He wasn't completely sure why, but he was crying. Maybe he was sad or just in a lot of pain. Or maybe it just felt good to know his family was still standing by him. 

 

On the eve of their 13th birthday, nothing was getting better. No one took the news of his demonhood well, in fact Dipper took it the worst out of everyone. The transformation had taken its toll, physically and emotionally. His teeth had completely sharpened, and sometimes his skin would just crack and turn black in small clumps. His core temperature had risen high enough that he could reasonably melt metal. And it felt like his flesh was trying to tear itself off. There was no distracting himself from it, not since his thought process started to speed up to beyond human comprehension. All he could do was bide his time until it was over. He knew Stan and Ford were downstairs, figuring out what to do with him. How could they possibly explain something that they didn't even understand? They eventually landed on calling his parents, insisting he was sick with the flu and should wait a few days to take the bus home, barely enough time to stall. 

The day ticked away into the evening, and evening into the dark, late night. He could hear the seconds, the milliseconds, passing in his ears.

“What are we gonna do,” Mabel sighed, pacing back and forth in the bedroom. Her suitcases were already packed, but there was no chance of her going anywhere so soon. “You can’t go home like this.”

“I’m not going home. I have to accept that this is the new normal for me. In a little bit, I'll fully,” he searched for the word, (Transcend) but refused to say it, “become a demon. I’ll officially separate from my human body and enter the mindscape. It’s going to hurt like a _bitch_.”

Mabel whipped her head around. “Language!”

“Sorry.”

“Well,” Mabel said, plopping down beside him on the bed. “Let’s look on the bright side. Demons don’t have to do laundry or take a shower. You’re already pretty good at those things.”

“Haha, funny,” he grumbled sarcastically, but could not deny the smile pressed into his lips.

“And… you’ll probably get really cool superpowers! You could read minds or fly or shoot lasers out of your eyes! Not to mention you won’t have to go to bed on time ever again or get a stomach ache from eating too much ice cream. Ultimate knowledge is up your alley too. You’ll have it all! Do you think you’ll be able to stream movies right into your head?”

“I guess that does sound pretty cool. I’ll finally be able to memorize every single Monster-Mon card.”

“See? It will be okay, Dip. There’s nothing Bill can do that we can’t handle." She stopped and looked at her watch. "How much longer do you have?" 

It didn't take him long to answer. "2 hours, 38 minutes, 19 seconds... 18... 17..." 

She stopped him there. "Should I stay here? I'd understand if you just want to be alone." 

His eyes squeezed shut in a burst of grinding concentration. "No, please stay. I'm scared to be alone." She climbed into the bed beside him, maybe to make himself less scared, maybe to make herself less scared. Either way, it worked. She felt warm, like a good warm, and not a burning warm. She pet at his hair and at his shoulders, watching him writhe under the intense pressure of his own being. 

“Mabel,” he whispered, barely able to choke out her name in one breath. The seconds counted down in his head. 

“Yeah?” Her hand swooped over his forehead. 

Midnight. It was now midnight. “Happy birthday.”

A smile creeped onto her face, mostly obscured by the pillow. “Happy birthday, oh demonic brother of mine.” She yawned, hands becoming limp beside him. Her eyes fell shut with little effort. He could hear the echo of her dreams whisper through the air as the soft pulse of her sleep rolled with the tide of her breath. Of course it was his own power that put her to sleep, because he wanted her to sleep. Her presence was comfort enough. 

He swallowed, trying to take in the last hours of tangible reality. The last sense of humanity to grace his skin. The heat trapped within the scratchy blankets, sweat against his neck, and Mabel’s breath tousling his hair. “2 hours, 33 minutes, 48 seconds... 47... 46..."  

 

When Mabel woke up, the bed was surprisingly cool. She reached out to the covers to find that there was no one beside her. She bolted upright, in a dazed panic, eyes glued with sleep.

“Good morning,” Dipper said, floating about 4 feet off the ground in the middle of the bedroom.

Mabel yawned and rubbed at her eyes. “Well, this is a little bonkers. How do you feel?”

He shrugged. “Different. Like, you know how mist feels when you pass your hand through it? Mix that with you leg falling asleep and you’ve got pretty much how I feel.” There was a slight echo to his voice when he spoke, but the kind you could get over if you heard it enough. "But it beats feeling like I'm about to explode." 

“I meant emotionally.”

“Oh. In that case, the same kind of anxiety when you come to school with a new haircut and you’re worried about what everyone is going to think and then you look at yourself in the mirror and for a moment you don’t recognize yourself? Except everything about you is the haircut and it’s a _really_ bad haircut.”

“Yikes,” she muttered. “I don’t think the haircut is that bad. You mostly look like yourself.” Save for the eyes, the claw-like fingers, shark teeth, and great black wings sprouting from his back. But he was recognizable. He still had high rounded cheeks, the faint memory of sunburn on his nose, the soft curls of lush brown hair beating just against his brow and-- yes, the outline of a Big Dipper birthmark. He still looked like her brother. Mabel reached out to grab his hand, but her fingers phased right through him as if he were just a mirage.

“It’s not worth the effort,” he said. “I’m not technically real anymore. You know how Bill was all serious about getting a physical form and possessing people? That’s me now. Well, hopefully without the apocalypse or possession parts.”

“But I can still see you and talk to you. So that’s good.”

He let his shoulders droop for a second and smiled. But there was something wrong, she shouldn’t be able to see him. Why could she see him?  “Yeah. It is.” He had to believe it was good, that this was the intended course of the universe. But something definitely wasn't right. 

 

\-----

 

The rest of the story, mostly involved a lot of struggling. Only being able to talk to Mabel made communicating with anyone else difficult. And while Stan and Ford easily accepted his new situation, his parents didn’t. They wanted nothing to do with this psychotic town, this crazy conspiracy theory, and they’d rather just believe their son was dead than demon. They weren’t going to believe it. That was the first time Mabel tried to summon him, the circles wouldn’t last more than a few seconds, eventually sputtering out before he could say anything. But it was enough for their parents to abandon him (and her) in Gravity Falls forever.

He was secretly grateful, though. He didn't want to go back home. The people of Gravity Falls were more than sympathetic to his situation. And having Mabel, Stan, and Ford made it all easier. Especially Mabel. She was the one who spent long hours working on summoning circles, talking him out of his madness. She bought him the horrible black suit at a thrift shop so he wouldn’t look so ridiculous when trying to answer summonings. She was the one who still set out a plate for him at dinner time. 

She was the ledge on which he teetered on the edge of his human and demonic origins.

Dipper looked over at Mabel, asleep on the bed opposite his. She laid, buried in mountains of pillows and blankets with Waddles curled up at her side. His own bed had been remade, by Mabel of course, and the revelation of his ability to sleep. And though the physical comfort made little impact on him, the emotional comfort was what really mattered. He snapped his fingers, sending another wave of good dreams toward her (this one would be about ice skating in an ice cream valley, with Xyler and Craz for good measure) before nestling his hand underneath his head. It was one of those quiet nights, no summonings or supernatural happenings. Just him, the creak of the Shack, and the soft lull of dreaming. 

“I’m gonna figure this out, Mabel,” he said, for no reason in particular, other than it had been eating away at his thoughts for a long time now. “I know it’s impossible, but I’m not letting that stop me. I’ll fix this, whatever it takes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 4 year anniversary to whatever nightmare to TAU is! I figured it was time to put my spin on the origin story, for my sake and yours. Honestly, it's not my favorite version, but I think it will serve a nice purpose the further I get into the fic. It took a long time to perfect and settle on what is pretty much the building block of the fic and I am very excited for what I have in store. 
> 
> This is not your average Transcendence AU.
> 
> \---  
> I did a few edits, mostly rephrasing things I figured could be said better. But then, overwhelmed by my own desires, I added a small moment between Stan and Dipper that I think deserved to be here.


	8. Acrimony, Delirium, and the Information Specialist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1 year, 5 months~ post-Transcendence 
> 
> Dipper needs some questions answered, and seeks the help of some new characters to help him come to some life-changing conclusions.

The Shack was quiet in the minutes before opening promptly at 7:30 a.m. Winter break was in full swing, greeted by a thick pile of fresh snow. Stan was out back, trying to create an attraction that was a little more suited to the season (Santa Claws, which was one of those dancing Santa decorations from a resale shop with lobster claws glued to it). Mabel and Wendy were taking advantage of the snow, trying to pelt Stan with snowballs from the roof and ducking before he could notice them.

Dipper hovered a few inches over the counter, watching as Soos mopped up some of the water tracked in by everyone’s boots in the gift shop. “Hey Soos,” he asked. “Could I ask you something? I could use some advice.”

Soos abandoned the mop, letting it clatter to the ground. “I’m great at advice! I’m also great at stuffing marshmallows in my mouth. Wanna see?” He produced a bag of marshmallows from his pocket and opening his mouth.

“No, I’m good.” He looked over his shoulder, making sure they were alone. “Listen, let’s say that a friend of mine… I don’t know… turned into a demon a year and a half ago. And things are starting to get out of hand. He’s got friends and family that he cares about, but he’s probably putting them in constant danger because all of these other demons are trying to kill him. And then there’s the whole problem of being an immortal in a human family.” He shook the thoughts out of his head. Sometimes his mind felt like a ball rolling downhill, once you got him started he couldn’t stop. “Anyway, should he try to fix it and make everything go back to normal? Or should he just accept things as they are?”

“Dude, seriously there’s no use trying to cover that one up. I know what you’re talking about.”   

He sighed, what was he even thinking? He could be honest with Soos. “Yeah I know I—”

Soo cut him off. “Your friend is in a really sticky situation. If it were me, I’d find some experts on the subject. I’d learn all about how demons work before I think about fixing it. It’s like fixing stuff around the Shack. You gotta know how it works so you can fix it, you know, after you accidentally break it.”

Dipper blinked, two gold and black eyes wide. “Huh. That is surprisingly good advice.” It occured to Dipper that, despite being one, he didn’t know a lot about demons. Most of that information was blocked from his omniscience. He had no idea how other demons dealt with their problems, or if they even have problems. But he could think of someone who might know.  

“Your welcome dude. Also ask your friend how many marshmallows can he fit into his mouth.”  

“32, without unhinging his jaw like a snake. Anything after that is just unfair.”  

“That’s awesome.”

Stan shuffled into the gift shop, pellets of snow dripping off his winter coat. “Alright, look alive people. Shack opens in 5! Time is money.” He took off his red knit cap and tossed it on the counter. “Dipper, either turn invisible or go hide out somewhere till closing time.”

The front door creaked open as Mabel and Wendy re-entered, faces red with glee and the nipping cold. “Aww, come on, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel said. “I think we can turn Dipper into a winter attraction. He’s got those little pointy ears. We can dress him up like an elf!”

Dipper rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that will go over well. Kids love elves with sharp teeth and the ability to give you nightmares.”

“You’ll go great with Santa Claws!”

“Nope,” Stan chided, hanging his coat up on the rack. “We gotta hang low for awhile. People are starting to get curious about some of the town’s… events. We just gotta pretend like everything is boring business as usual.”

“Stan’s right on this one. People are starting to get too interested in the Transcendence and with the holiday season more tourists and government agents are going to spend their vacations here. I wish I knew why, Gravity Falls is anything but a holiday hot spot.” He popped off the counter where he was floating, and continued to float across the gift shop. “And besides, I’ve got some of my own investigating to do. Demon stuff.”

Mabel frowned at him, “Demon stuff?”

“That sounds awesome!” Wendy shouted. “Can we come along?”

“No, it’s pretty boring stuff. Besides, Santa Claws will fall apart before lunch and you’ll all need to make more ridiculous attractions to cover for Stan. I like the Abdominal Snowman, which is just the gorilla in storage spray painted white but with a picture of abs tapped to it from one of Mabel’s _Teen Teen_ magazines. That idea is combination Mabel and Wendy, so good job guys. Keep jamming on more ideas.”

He teleported from the room before anyone could question his motivations or the info dump.

Soos chuckled, “Heh. Abdominal Snowman. That’s pretty good.”

 

————

 

He thought he was going to visit the old woman with the turtle skull for a head. But somewhere along the way he must have taken a wrong turn. Instead Dipper found himself in a green field, the grass blowing in a breeze he couldn’t feel. A couple puffy clouds rolled over head that looked as if they were made of marshmallows that had been melted together. It all felt very familiar, but in the way reoccuring dreams feel familiar.

Something nudged the back of his legs, right below the crook in his knees. “Huh?” He spun around, finding two sheep with mostly black wool that would shift and blend into a variety of colored splotches.

The first one trotted in place for a few seconds, looking to the second. “ _Look! He came back!”_

The second one groaned, and rolled it’s glowing eyes. “I _t took well over a year, we obviously don’t matter to him.”_

Dipper stumbled back a few steps before regaining his footing. The sheep looked at him with an unblinking anticipation. “Oh, hey, I remember you guys. You’re the nightmares. We met when I first learned I could dream.”

A smile creeped across the first one’s face. “ _See? He didn’t forget. He’s just been busy.”_

 _“Too busy for his own familiars?”_ The second one scoffed. “ _I don’t buy it.”_

“I’m sorry but what do you mean by familiars?” he asked. “Like the kind that witches keep with them? Black cats and stuff?”

“ _Bah! What are familiars? What kind of question is that,”_ the second one grumbled. _“You are a terrible demon.”_

Dipper put his hands on his hips and sneered. “Hey! I’m still pretty new to this, take it easy on me!”

The first nightmare nudged Dipper again to gain his attention. _“Ignore Acrimony. It can be a bit grumpy. To answer your question, familiars are loyal companions. It’s our job to look after you and obey your orders.”_

 _“Pfft,”_ Acrimony dropped into the grass with a defiance. _“You won’t see me taking orders from the likes of him.”_

_“You will because you have not only do we have no choice, but he needs us. He’s just a child.”_

Dipper held out both his hands, jumping between the nightmares. “Hang on! First, I'm 14. I don't think you can call me a child. Second, I thought you were nightmares, how did you become my familiars? Did I miss something?”

 _“Well, do you remember waking up from the blast that started the Transcendence?”_ the first one began. Dipper nodded. _“You couldn’t fall asleep after that, not for a very long time at least. We are the nightmares you were supposed to have. All these fears that were running around your head about what was happening to you. We are the product of nightmares that have nowhere to go. In essence, we Transcended with you. We’re yours, so technically that makes us familiars. But nightmares can be made in multiple different ways. It’s not uncommon for demons to keep them.”_ (It is very likely you will collect more over time, seeing as that you’ve only slept 63 hours, 26 minutes, and 9 seconds since the Transcendence. That’s a lot of nightmares you aren’t having.) (You should sleep more often. Sleeping improves your mood, focus, and speed of omniscience.)

Dipper resigned to sitting down in the grass, pressing his thumb and index finger against the bridge of his nose. It never really occurred to him to think about where all of his nightmares went, or his good dreams for that matter. “Well, the thought of my personal nightmares running around is terrifying. Thank you… uhm what’s your name?”  

 _“I’m Delirium. That’s Acrimony. Isolation is off hiding somewhere-- as you could probably guess. And come to think of it, I haven’t seen Massacre around. Acrimony, have you seen Massacre?”_ Delirium called.

“That’s fine. Thank you, Delirium.” Dipper said before an answer could be given, “I really don’t want to know where Massacre is. In fact, I think I’d feel worse if I did. And I guess you guys already know me, or the worst parts of me that is.”

_“Of course we do, Lord Alcor.”_

“It’s Dipper, actually.”

Delirium plopped down beside him, staring up at him with those painful glowing eyes. _“Why’d you come back, Lord Dipper. Do you need us for something?”_

“Again, it’s Dipper. Just Dipper. No need for the honorific prefix. And, I’m sorry, but I think I ended up here by accident. I was trying to meet with the old woman with a turtle skull for a head. I kind of need her advice. So I should probably get going…”

 _“That old coot,”_ Acrimony snapped. _“Why would you go to her?”_

Dipper shrugged, “I find her helpful and easy to talk to. And she makes really good dessert.”

_“Oh, so it’s because she can snap her fingers and make cake appear huh? Well I could too if I had fingers!”_

_“What I think Acrimony is trying to say is that you can always talk to us! We’ll come to you at any time, any place!”_ Delirium countered.

“I don’t know if you guys want to hear my problems. Also, I’d like someone with more life experience, and you guys have like a year and a half of just sitting around in a pocket dimension.”

 _“Give us your best shot, boy,”_ replied Acrimony.

Delirium plopped its head down onto Dipper’s knee and watched with a patient glare. “Okay, fine. Well, I don’t like being a demon. It sucks, like a lot. Other demons are always trying to kill me. I can’t do normal things like go to high school or answer the front door. Someone offered me a bag full of crickets as an offering and I swallowed them whole. I don’t even know why! And then there’s Mabel. She’s my twin sister, my best friend, my Mizar! I can’t just exist forever without her.” He looked at Delirium, a pit forming in his stomach. He sucked in a deep breath before letting it slip back out, the tasteless air in his mouth. “I was told to find another demon who has been around a while that could explain to me how demons work. So I can figure out if… if this is even fixable. If things can be normal again.”

Acrimony chortled to itself. _“You don’t need a demon! You need to talk to I.S.”_

“I.S.?” (Abbreviation for Islamic State, Intermediate School, Independent Soldiers, Immune System, Intelligent Systems, Importance Sampling, Information Science, Image Stabilization--) Okay, he had enough of that.

 _“Oh yes! The Information Specialist!”_ Delirium agreed. _“His domain is all past and current knowledge-- he doesn’t have any of those pesky blocks your omniscience has. So whatever question you have, he can answer it.”_

(Your search for the Information Specialist cannot be matched. This information is classified and unavailable to you.)

“I don’t know… Maybe this is a bad idea. I shouldn’t be getting involved with this. I think I want to talk to the old woman with the turtle skull for a head.”

He tried to leave but Delirium jumped in his way. _“We would never steer you wrong! You should at least go say hello.”_

 _“It’s very good politics to introduce yourself to other immortals,”_ Acrimony said. _“Get them to like you before they realize what a nuisance you are.”_

“Well, if it’s a good idea to introduce myself and if he’s not too busy. Alright.” He shifted his foot 10 degrees to the right, a summoning circle appearing in the neon grass. “Let’s go find this Information Specialist.” The nightmares bounded into the circle beside him, the warmth of their wool radiating against his legs. He wasn’t exactly sure how to find the Information Specialist, but the moment his circle burst into flames, the nightmares seemed to know the way.

He just hoped this wouldn’t be a bad idea.

 

The teleportation landed him somewhere in an office. The hallway was infinite the number on the first door labeled 00000000000000000000000000000000 (this is going to go on for a while). The checkered black and white floor warped itself into a thin ribbon that got smaller and smaller until disappearing, like one of those optical illusions in fun houses. Occasionally the sound of a phone ringing or a stapler getting jammed would infiltrate the silence. Delirium trotted over to one of the doors on the left side and tapped its hoof against the wood. _“It’s this one!”_

The gold plaque on the door was written in a language he was unfamiliar with, but easily understood that read: INFORMATION SPECIALIST and then an electric green piece of paper taped beneath it: AVAILABLE BY APPOINTMENT ONLY!

“Maybe I should make an appointment and come back later,” he commented, but when he looked down there were no nightmares by his side. Instead they were pressing their way through the door. “Hey! Get back here!” He tried to grab Acrimony, the base of its tail slipping through his fingers. With a groan, Dipper creeped in after them, hoping that no one would ever notice.

The room was much bigger on the inside, as in it was fit for a giant. Bookshelves stood like mountains over his head, containing books, scrolls, and trashy magazines. Dozens of TV screens blared live news from all around the world while old fashioned radios crackled with the news from 1957. Everything smelled musty with the sweet curl of old paper mixed in. Books piled themselves up in corners next to trash cans overflowing with empty cups of BuckBucks coffee and microwave burrito wrappers.

Dipper turned around, finding Delirium and Acrimony at the base of a desk that was the size of two Mystery Shacks stacked together. They grinned at him, and he shook his head, pointing to the ground as a signal to come. “Get back here now!”

“PLEASE LEAVE, CAN YOU NOT SEE I AM BUSY!” A voice boomed. The Information Specialist stood up and looked over the edge of his desk. Much to Dipper’s surprise, he looked like a regular guy.  A man somewhere in his late 40s wearing a white button up shirt and a dark blue tie. A pair of glasses slid down his nose when he turned his head. But the curdle of his voice and sheer size made him more terrifying than some of the creatures Dipper had ever met.

Dipper staggered back, stumbling over his own feet and onto the floor. “I-I’m sorry! My familiars came in here without permission. I just came to get them! That’s all!”

“YOU COME IN HERE WITHOUT MY AUTHORIZATION. TIME IS DATA! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I--Oh!” His booming and echoed voice dropped to a more casual frequency, suddenly more kind and friendly. “Hey! I know you! You’re Alcor! You’re that little half-breed everyone’s been talking about in the break room. Wow, a celebrity in my office. I wish I’d cleaned up a little bit. It’s not everyday people like you just drop in here.”

Dipper shook his head, increasingly more aware of the fact that his face had turned #EE204S shade of red. “I’m not a celebrity. I just lost control of my familiars. I’ll just be on my way now.”

“What? I mean, okay you’re not a celebrity like those Sev’ral Timez guys, but you’re a pretty big deal in demon circles. Not that you would know that. All those rules about demonic omniscience just get in the way of an effective internal database, don’t they? How about you hop on up here so we can chat?” He reached down with one massive hand, and grabbed Dipper, catching him between curled fingers and a sweaty palm, as if he were a doll. Dipper looked down at his nightmares and grimaced as if to say ‘this is all your fault’. The Information Specialist let him sit down on a pile of sports almanacs from 1950-2000. “What can I do for you, Alcor? Or do you prefer Dipper?”

“I,” he paused. “Wait. How do you know my name?”

The Informational Specialist laughed and pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Well, that’s my job isn’t it? Collect information on everything and everyone? I know your real name too, but don’t worry, I don’t share that kind of stuff with anyone. It’s completely classified.”

 _“He prefers Lord Just Dipper,”_ Delirium called from the floor.

“It’s Dipper. Sorry. I’ve just become acquainted with my nightmares and I’m starting to question how smart they are.” The nightmares had somehow hopped their way up onto the almanacs beside him, Delirium curling up at his side and Acrimony sitting down as far away as it could.

 _“Speak for yourself,”_ Acrimony grumbled. _“You are perhaps the dumbest demon that ever lived.”_

“Oh I know all about familiars. They can be a little over excited sometimes. But these little guys can pack a powerful punch,” replied the Information Specialist, reaching down with one finger to pat the nightmares on the head. “I recognize you have a lot of questions. I’d be happy to answer those for you.”

“Oh uhm… wow I suddenly don’t know where to start.”

“Would it be helpful if I printed off a list of every unanswered question you’ve had in your lifetime? I’ve got that file right here on my computer.”

“No! Let’s not do that.” Dipper thought for a moment, chewing on his thumb nail (or claw?) in thought. “I guess, what does the term half-breed even mean? You called me that when I came in. Other demons have called me that too."

The Information Specialist beamed at the question and summoned for a book at the end of his library, having it fly into the center of his hand. He flipped through the pages, their scrawled and inhuman text reflecting into his glasses. “Demon politics! Very interesting subject. Took a few classes on it in college.” He stopped flipping and landed on a page. “So half-breed is a term usually reserved for half-demons. It’s not uncommon for demons to have relations with another non-demonic being during which they--”

Dipper covered his ears, “Nope! I know where this is going!”

“Oh, sorry. I forgot human teenagers are a little sensitive to this kinda stuff. Well, in any case, offspring is produced that is commonly referred to as a half-breed. But you were born human, so technically not a half-breed. You transcended, which is the first time that’s ever happened in the history of like forever! It’s so cool! You have all the powers of your predecessor, but you have a human soul. Pretty wild how that happened. However, it seems that other demons have taken to calling you half-breed to allude to your impure origins.”

Dipper nodded, floating cross-legged over the almanacs in captivation. “Are there any half-breeds out there?”

He flipped through the book again. “Not in the recent. Metus and his gang of purists took care of them a long time ago. Demon purists believe that only pure-born demons deserve to exist and want to restore the multiverse to its former power. Metus and the other purists kill half-breeds, denying them their lineage and stealing their power.”

  
Dipper swallowed, “Stealing power? You can actually do that?" Where was this guy a year and a half ago? Was this the demon training he was missing out on? 

He set the book down. “So get this. Demons are pretty much made of energy, the same stuff that came out of the big bang. It’s where all their power comes from. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, so when they die, this power needs somewhere to go. It can either be released out into multiverse or it can be absorbed by another being. It’s the same reason demons eat souls, because souls contain this same energy. Nor is it not uncommon for demons to kill each other for power, but for the most part, the most powerful ones respect each other. They see no point in a battle that would last centuries. But killing half-breeds or fledglings to gain power is typical. It's a lot easier to kill something inexperienced than an ancient and powerful being."

Dipper leaned in with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his hands. “So these guys are trying to kill me because they want all my power? I'm just an easy target to them?”

“Partially. There’s never been anything like you before. In fact, I’m still getting over the fact that you’re in my office!” The Information Specialist was starting to turn red from the intense grin that spread across his face. He cleared his throat and pulled at the collar of his shirt. “But, back your question. The purists are after you because there’s no telling how powerful you could become. You have all the powers of a demon and then some. Because you were born human, you are predisposed to entering the physical plane. It should be pretty easy for you.”

Dipper shrugged. “Not really. I still need to accept offerings or possess vessels to do anything.”

The Information Specialist grinned and lowered his face down to his desk so he could meet Dipper in the eye. “Let me tell you something, most fledglings can’t do that. It takes a demon millions of years to be able to do those kinds of things. It took you a year! You’ve dealt with Bill Cipher, really powerful guy. But even he couldn’t master the physical plane. Possession is hard, and offerings are even harder.” He drummed his fingers against the table. “Mention, I've noticed that omniscience is a little hard for you. While being in the physical plane is what you are used to, having near infinite knowledge don’t jive well with your human thought-processes. But you're making some good strides." 

“Really?”

“Oh yeah! I bet that within a couple centuries, you’ll be beyond powerful. The purists are so keen on knocking you out because it won’t be long before you can destroy them. Of course, I can’t see into the future like you. But that’s my best analysis.”

Dipper had to admit it. It was a pretty good feeling knowing that he wasn’t a terrible demon after all. He was a good one, and a pretty powerful one at that. The possibilities listed themselves to him. If he’d already seen some of the most powerful demon in the universe, what would that make him? The thought of near unlimited power made him grin. And entering the physical plane at will would mean he could spend more time with Mabel… but learning about his own potential wasn’t why he came here.

“And uhm,” he whispered, “is it at all possible to reverse the Transcendence? Could I be human again?”

The Information Specialist stopped, wide-eyed under the glare of his glasses. “You want to reverse it? Why would you want to do that? You’ve got everything on my check list that humans desire. Power, immortality, fluffy animal companions, and the ability to eat whatever you want without gaining weight.” He pulled a yellow sticky note out of his desk drawer with the list written on it in smudged pencil.

“Can you just tell me if it’s possible?”

He turned to face the computer, typing in a few things and opening a few files here and there. “Well, uhm. No. It’s not possible. Or at least not feasible. You could always plead your case to higher beings, gods and such. But your case would be denied, this is a freak case and they won’t want to alter the timeline on this one. Not to mention their schedules are booked for like the next thousand years. So no… not possible. I’m sorry.”

Dipper felt his heart in his chest, as if it were beating again. He turned white, a few shades off from paper. “No. No. There’s got to be another way.”

This wasn’t right. He was supposed to fix this. Make it so that everything would be back to normal. Make it so that he could go to high school. Work at the Shack. Not have to wait for some kind of offering to give someone a hug. Just to be a normal kid again.

He spoke all in one breath, feeling the words spill out on his tongue. “And what about making someone else immortal? Is that possible?”

The Information Specialist nodded and checked his computer again. “Yes, it is. But it comes with all kinds of complications. For example, vampires can’t go out in sunlight and they drink blood, which is sort of off-putting to most people. Someone can become part of the fair-folk, but fairies are jerks... don't tell them I said that. They can hold grudges forever.” He sighed and leaned back in his black wheely chair. He slipped his glasses into his pocket and rubbed at his eyes. “Look, I gotta be honest with you. I know what you’re thinking and I don’t recommend messing with this. Transcending was a weird thing that should have never happened. But you can’t go around making other people immortal. You’re pretty powerful for a fledgling but something like this is an extreme level that involves literally bending reality. Not to mention, immortality is kind of terrible if you weren’t born with it.”

Dipper didn’t look up. “Yeah, I know. I guess I'm just... I'm still adjusting to this. You know?" It felt like something inside of him snapped in half. He gave Delirium a soft pat on the head before rising to his feet. “Well, thanks for taking some time out of your busy schedule to answer my questions.”

“Anytime! Just give me a call next time! I hate it when people see my office so messy.” He passed Dipper a large business card, but when it exchanged between them, the size mysteriously shrunk.

“Thanks, man. I will.” He crammed it in my pocket. “Oh, and how many marshmallows can you fit inside your mouth? A friend of mine would like to know.”

“52, if they are proportional to me.”

“Wow. That’s impressive.”

Dipper and the Information Specialist shared a formal bow, before Dipper and the nightmares were placed back on the floor. The door out was, of course, larger than the one they entered through. But when they appeared back out the other side, it was a usual 7 ft high. He pressed his back up against the white wall, in the hallway, unnerved by the continued silence.

 _“See! You wanted answers and we got you some. Try not to be so picky from now on,”_ Acrimony grumbled.

 _“Yeah! We can be useful!”_ Delirium paused and looked up to see the thin trails of gold tears spilling down his cheeks. _“What’s wrong?”_

Dipper dropped to the floor, unable to keep himself standing or floating. He wiped at his face with the backs of his sleeves, staining the black fabric of his suit. “I shouldn’t have come here. Having answers just makes me feel worse. I’ll lose my mind if I have to be alone forever. I was better off not knowing these things.”

 _“What’s wrong with losing your mind?”_ Delirium asked, with big innocent eyes. He stifled back a sob, letting the tears clog up in his throat.

Acrimony licked at the side of his face. _“Don’t cry, you big baby. Who even said you had to listen to that guy anyway?”_

Delirium nudges itself closer and licked at the tips of his fingers. They were both so warm against him, and it would have been comforting if they literally weren’t nightmares. _“Yeah! He said it won’t be easy, but it’s possible! And if anyone can make the impossible possible, it’s you! Whatever you need, we’ll do it.”_

He nodded and sniffled, “Thanks guys, but I think I’m gonna go home now. I have a lot to process.”

 _“Please talk to us again soon!”_ He wasn't sure if he would want to speak with the nightmares ever again. 

 

———

 

He got back just in time to catch Mabel on her lunch break from working the gift shop. The tips of her fingers were white with spray paint and hot glue clung to her sweater. “Hey, bro-bro!” She bounded up to him in the living room. “Thanks for the heads up on that Abdominal Snowman thing! It saved us enough time for me to add a bucket of glitter to it! I’d say he’s a very dashing gorilla!” She stopped talking long enough to suck in a deep breath. “So how’d all that demon stuff go?”

“Fine, just doing a little research. That’s all.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you okay? Your face is a little red.”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, you’ll have to tell me about all your learning stuff later! Stan cut five minutes from my break and I really need to eat a sandwich right now.”

Dipper crammed his hands into his pockets, feeling the crunch of the Information Specialist’s business card against his hand. “Hey, Mabel,” he called before she could reach the kitchen.

“Yeah?”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how risky would you say you are?”

“12! Why are you asking?”

He nodded, crunching the card in his palm. “Just thinking about some future plans. Oh and you might want to go for PB and J. The cheese in the fridge just went bad.”  

She grinned, “I kinda like how you know everything! This demon biz is pretty cool.” Then she darted back off into the kitchen. 

Dipper sighed. “Actually this demon biz kinda sucks.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, wow. Including all these new OCs was a lot of work. But it was kind of the best way to play things out. I'm really happy I went back to the nightmares, and starting giving them some shape and purpose. But oh my god, I think I'm in love with the Information Specialist. What a nice dude. I could write stories just about his daily life. (I recently binged The Good Place and started The Office, he's sort of a crazy mix of that.) But I do think that's enough heavy-handed information dumps for now. Expect some more relaxed chapters coming up. 
> 
> Oh and by the way-- the almanacs are a joke about Back to the Future Part II. Just in case you were wondering...


	9. Matchmaker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1 year, 7 months ~ post Transcendence 
> 
> Dipper and Mabel are called upon to help the gnomes find a new queen for Valentine's day.

Dipper put his index fingers to his temples, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that? I know just about everything and yet I could not follow what you are saying.”

Jeff groaned and wilted in his chair. “Okay, our old queen was eaten by a badger. We need to find another queen who is, preferably, larger than a badger. It’s been a while and we really don’t want to spend another Valentine’s day alone.”

Dipper pursed his lips together and shared an uncomfortable glance with Mabel, who was still swatting away at gnomes who were trying to smell her hair. “Yeah, that’s a no from me.”

“Aww come on!” Jeff pounded his fists against the tiny carved table, rattling the bottles and acorns on top. The gnomes hissed and growled in a chorus of disappointment. “Why not?”

“Well, considering the one time you tried to kidnap my sister, betrayed us to Gideon, and the 12 times, and counting, that I caught you hiding under the sink in our bathroom, I don’t really think I want to help you guys.”

Per Mabel’s idea, Dipper decided to try to connect more with the supernatural residents of Gravity Falls. From a technical standpoint, he had claimed Gravity Falls as his territory and that made everyone who lived in it his responsibility. Not to mention the fact that some supernatural creatures could live to be hundreds of years old, so maintaining good relationships with them was key. In the beginning, they didn’t know what to make of him. They all knew Dipper as a human and they trusted him that way. But becoming a demon changed the relationship and power dynamic drastically.

For the most part, though, things were okay. He helped the monsters integrate freely into the human world; teaching them how to get a library card, order at Greasy’s Diner, or even attend night classes at the community college. And the monsters did a pretty good job of welcoming him into their daily life. He swapped CDs with the multibear once, and really impressed the man-otaurs by plunging his fist into the pain hole without screaming (not feeling pain-- or anything-- anymore had its benefits).

Things were finally starting to work out and then the gnomes called.

“That was only 11 times and you know it,” Jeff yelled.

Dipper sighed, “You guys also realize I can’t help you just because I want to, right? Everything sort of comes at a price.”

A gnome in a suit pretending to be qualified to be Jeff’s lawyer came and whispered into his ear. “Fine, I’ll make the offer. But we aren’t going any higher!” Jeff turned his attention back to Dipper and cleared his throat. “The gnomes may or may not have been raiding some vending machines and local gas stations in order to acquire the sweet stuff. You know, YumberJacks, 3 Amigos Bars, Sour Pain Candy. We are willing to give you a share of that.”

Dipper shared a glance with Mabel, watching her return and approving nod. “How much?” he asked.

“⅓ of the stash.”

“Are there gummy koalas? If there are no gummy koalas, we walk,” Mabel shouted.

“You heard her,” Dipper said.

Jeff nodded to his gnome lawyer. “You gotta deal. Find us a queen and we’ll get you those gummy koalas!”

The shook on it, the soft pulse of a blue flame erupting between their palms. Dipper was beginning to like making deals. It gave him the feeling of reward as ordering something online that you don’t really need does. It also gave him a sense of purpose, that he wasn’t doomed to aimlessly wander the universe for the rest of time with nothing to do. He smiled, showing off all the points of his teeth, “Deal.”

 

\------

 

Mabel pulled the heart shaped sunglasses over her eyes and cracked her knuckles. “Let’s make a match!” She dropped herself down in front of the “home computer” Ford had made (he was still accepting the fact that technology had developed on its own in the 30 years he was gone) which basically consisted of a monitor and dozens of tower cases lined up beside it. You’d think the guy would have accepted the idea of a laptop by now, but he was certain the trend would blow over in favor of sturdier materials and supercomputer capacity for storage (it would not).

Mabel logged onto monstermash.com and started making a profile for all the gnomes, which proved difficult seeing the website’s algorithm. “Okay, first question. ‘What is your name?’” She spoke aloud as she typed, “Society of Gnomes… Question two: ‘What is your gender?’... I’m gonna put Society of Gnomes again…”

Dipper rolled his eyes and hovered closer over her shoulder. “Mabel? You do realize this is unnecessary, right? I could easily find a willing match for them in a nanosecond… and I’ve already done it.”

Mabel laughed and turned around in the chair. “Dip, you’re not a love expert like me. You don’t know how these things work.” (He didn’t, as it would take a million years to fill out that kind of paperwork.) “And besides, you’re looking at it all wrong. A willing match isn’t the same as a perfect match. We need to find someone who is single, ready to mingle, and will fall in love with 1,000 gnomes.”

“Are you saying that a computer can do a better job than me? I am literally one of the most powerful beings alive.”

“This computer is much more romantically competent than you,” she teased.

“Is not.”

“Is too. The computer has probably kissed more girls than you.” She made a kissy face at him.

“That’s because you use the computer to look up pictures of male models and kiss the screen!”

“I thought I told you not to use your omniscience to spy on me!” she snapped, cheeks flushing a dark red.

“I didn’t need to. The monitor always has Sparkle Yum Berry Lipgloss on it!”

Mabel crossed her arms and sneered at Dipper, “Fine, Mr. Know-it-all! If you’re so confident in yourself, how about a little competition? Winner gets fame, glory, and all the good candy. Loser gets shame and loser candy.”

“Ha! Really, you want to go up against me?” he chuckled. “I know everything!”

Mabel pushed a smug smile at him. “Then it shouldn’t be too hard to beat me.”

“It won’t be.”

It was on the rare occasion the twins would become highly competitive with each other. There was that one time they argued over who got the spare room in the Shack, other times it was about board games or who could scream the loudest for the longest, but when the twins decided to compete with each other, it was always an ordeal. They would scoff and pretend like they didn’t know each other or wrestle each other to the ground.

Since the Transcendence, their competitive nature had gotten even more severe. Dipper would snap his fingers to knock Mabel temporarily unconscious while Mabel would lay binding sigils and salt circles on the ground to trap him when he wasn’t paying attention. Anything to ensure their own title as Alpha Twin. This was no exception.

All was fair in love and war.

 

\------

After finally escaping the binding sigil Mabel had laid under the rug in the gift shop (luckily Soos eventually came by and let him out), Dipper was ready to present his match to the gnomes. (It only took a matter of minutes to appear in the dreams of his selection and tell her she had been invited out on a date by a gnome society that evening. Of course, his selection was more than willing-- as he had predicted.) (As for Mabel, she was still busy sorting through the online responses, chatting back and forth, and trying to convince her selections that a blind date with gnomes was a good idea.) For good measure, he had the whole thing set up for them too. A fancy dinner, some nice music pulsing from Stan’s old boom box, and candles lit by blue flame.

There was no way Mabel was going to beat him.

He stood in front of Jeff, the other gnomes huddling around in the trees and behind bushes. Jeff tapped his foot anxiously on the ground. “This better be good, kid! There’s a lot on the line here!”

Dipper cleared his throat, “Alright, Jeff. As promised, I have found you a date. May I present the future Queen of the Gnomes, Gerty.” He gestured towards the trees, as a stout figure peeled through the trees. “She’s a cave troll, who is, and I’m quoting her thoughts directly here ‘looking for something sweet’. She is also larger than a badger, which I recognize was an important quality.”

Gerty grinned, her jagged teeth apparent beneath her bright red lipstick. Dipper couldn’t say Gerty was the most attractive cave troll in the world, but she cleaned up pretty nice. A red dress hugged her hard, rocky skin. And she had pulled her stringy brown hair out of her face. “Hey, Jeff,” she said, posing to show off the amount of effort she put into her appearance. “Dipper told me so much about you.”

A smile popped onto Jeff’s face. “Hot dog! Now she looks like she could take a badger on in a fight!” His smile turned into a smoulder, “And might I say, also looks amazing in the color red.”

Gerty blushed, “Oh you. You’re looking pretty delicious yourself.”

Dipper spun around, closing his eyes. “Okay, this is getting a little gross. You guys have a good time on your date. I’ll just be somewhere that’s not here. You know how to call me if you need me.” He teleported a couple yards away, just far enough away the was out of sight and ear shot. Best to let the new couple have some privacy.

He was really looking forward to rubbing his success in Mabel’s face.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Jeff said, seating himself at the table. “Dinner is a gnome speciality! Which is to say we stole it from the diner in town. Spaghetti and acorns, they were out of meatballs so we had to improvise. I hope you’re hungry!”

“Absolutely famished.” Gerty said, dragging her clawed across the checkered tablecloth.

“I’d think so! A big girl like you needs energy to fight off badgers!” A little gnome waiter came by and filled their water glasses. “I just can’t believe a nice pretty girl like you is single!”

The blue candle light fractured off of her jagged teeth (cave trolls eat whatever they can find) and pitch black eyes (all iris, an evolutionary advantage to help trolls see in the dark). She chuckled to herself, “Oh, my dates don’t last so long. Men don’t seem to recognize that I have very specific needs.”

“Well, that won’t be a problem. With all 1,000 of us, you’ll have everything you ever needed.”

“Oh, maybe. 1,000 will last me quite some time.” She licked her lips with anticipation.

The gnome waiter came by again, dropping the plates of spaghetti and acorns on the table. Jeff rubbed his hands together. “Before we get to that, let’s dig in!” Just as he reached for his fork, Gerty leaned in over the table.

Her red lipped smirk was sharp and powerful. “Oh, I’m sorry. But I don’t eat spaghetti.”

“Oh,” Jeff frowned in thought for a moment, before returning to a smile. “That’s okay! What do you eat? Maybe we can rustle something up for you.”

She pursed her lips, thinking to herself. “Mostly things like berries, roots, chipmunks,” her black eyes suddenly became very menacing, “gnomes.”

“Huh?” Gerty rose to her feet, plucking Jeff up off the ground by the back of his shirt. He wracked against her grip, swinging his fist and legs around. “Hey! What gives?” he screamed.

The other gnomes moved into defensive maneuvers, stacking on top of each other to make living crossbows, all aiming at Gerty. Some scampered around by her feet, trying to bite her ankles or scale up her back, but she bashed them all away.

Gerty laughed to herself. “Let’s just skip ahead to desert shall we? I hear gnome flesh is very sweet!”

Jeff squirmed and screamed, “Ahh! Dipper! Help!” Gerty opened her mouth, preparing to eat Jeff alive.

Dipper popped into existence a second later. “What’s happening?” He looked over at Gerty, her grayish tongue hanging out of her mouth as she lowered Jeff inside. “Oh my god!” With one hand, Dipper commanded the shadows to come out from beneath the trees and around the bushes, gripping Gerty around the wrists and ankles, and yanking her away from the gnomes. He then used his spare hand to grab Jeff out of the air before he plummeted into the dirt. He let out a breath and set Jeff gently onto the ground. “That was a close one.”

“A close one,” Jeff shouted over the sounds of Gerty struggling against the shadows.  “She almost ate me! That was much too close for comfort.”

“I’m so sorry. I--”

Dipper was interrupted by the sound of Mabel breaking through the underbrush, crunching leaves beneath her feet. She still had her pink heart sunglasses on, and was standing in a power pose. “Jeff! Ignore whatever Dipper has said. My matchmaking skills have found you the new love of your life. Melissa, a sentient swarm of bees!” On cue, a swarm of bees, apparently named Melissa, buzzed through the gnome village. They looped and arched in chaotic patterns, chasing down individual gnomes and stinging their faces (it was a sign of affection for sentient bee swarms). The gnomes screamed and swatted in terror at Melissa, some taking cover in hollowed out trees and some resorting to lying on the ground and crying.

“Whoops,” Mabel said to herself.

Jeff screamed and shielded himself from the multiple bees that buzzed around his face. “What have you done?”

Mabel tapped her bottom lip. “I think she’s just nervous.”

Dipper pushed her out of the way, trying to maintain his shadow’s grip on Gerty while trying to herd Melissa away from the gnomes. The shadows swirled and pulled at the bees, his concentration pulled between the two poorly made matches. Maneuvering the bees with one hand was a struggle watching them slip and slide out from underneath the shadows as he tried to grab them one by one.

As he wrangled the final bee, he looked between both parties, exhaustion plastered on his face. “Thanks for coming out here ladies, but it’s a no from the gnomes. I’ll just send you all home now. Good luck in the rest of your romantic endeavors!” He snapped his fingers, warping reality around Gerty and Melissa until they both disappeared from sight. His arms dropped to his sides. “Wow, that was really hard. Is everyone okay?”

Everyone was not okay. Most of the gnomes has large welts on their face from the bee stings. Others pulled them self off of the ground, bruised from being beaten away by Gerty. They staggered around, leaning on each other for support as they tried to find a good place to sit down and rest.

The whole corner of the village was destroyed too. The hollowed out tree houses had some windows broken and doors hanging off of hinges. The table that had been set up was now on it’s side, spaghetti and acorns spilled across the dirt.

“What were the two of you thinking,” Jeff screamed, hands balled into fists, and a welt forming over his left eye.   

The few gnomes that still had the strength stacked on top of each other in sloppy and dazed formation, Jeff skittering up to the top until he reached eye level with the twins. He pointed at Mabel, “You! A swarm of bees? What kind of chaotic idea is that? We wouldn’t be in this mess had you just accepted to be our gnome queen years ago!”

“Melissa has a great personality. You just didn’t take the time to get to know her.” (She really did have a great personality.) 

Jeff rolle his eyes. “And you!” he pointed at Dipper. “A gnome-eating troll! I thought you were supposed to know everything and you set us up with her? Were you trying to kill us? You’re a sorry excuse for a demon _and_ a human! You never have any idea what you are messing with!”

Dipper wanted to retort, but couldn’t find the words to respond. He had been so careless with his omniscience again. He was still so new to this, he barely understood how it worked. And this time it almost had some serious consequences. “I’m sorry, Jeff. I really am.”

“Sorry won’t cut it! You’ve ruined us for the last time. The deal is off!” The moment Jeff said that, Dipper felt something break off inside of him, what energy he had left now completely drained. “Now get out! I don’t want to see either of you around here again!”

 

\-----

The twins left the gnome village defeated.

Dipper sighed and dropped down onto a fallen log. “We really screwed this one up, huh, Mabes?”

“Yeah, no kidding,” she said, sitting down beside him. They both rested their chins in the palms of their hands. “I was really excited about doing something nice for someone, but it’s a lot harder than I thought. Maybe we should stick to cult bashing and demon fighting.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Dipper was really excited about it too. He hoped that maybe he could use his powers from something productive and helpful, rather than just for violence. But maybe that’s all demons were good for: evil. “I just don’t get it though. I still know that we’re gonna find the perfect date for the gnomes. My omniscience says so. But if it wasn’t Gerty and it wasn’t Melissa, who could it be?”

She chuckled to herself, “Maybe we should have tried some of the humans in town. I can think of some really desperate people.”

“Ew, no!” Dipper laughed and pushed her shoulder playfully. “Can you imagine? Jeff with someone like… Lazy Susan?”

Mabel shrugged, “It could work. Jeff likes stealing food from the diner and mature women. Lazy Susan likes things that are roughly the size of a cat.”

The twins laughed, their shoulders rubbing up against each other. Taking a breath, Dipper shook his head. “I’m sorry I took this way too seriously and kept making you pass out and stuff. It’s no fun when we try to compete. We work much better as a team.”

“And I’m sorry I trapped you in that binding for like… 2 hours?”

“1 hour and 47 minutes. But apology accepted.” He looked out at the sun setting over the thick brush of the pine trees, a hazy pink turning into a heavy navy blue. It blinked through the needles of the trees, casting jagged shadows on the ground. “Maybe we should go home.”

Something crunched around the corner, a stick breaking. A guttural moan broke over the whisper of the forest.

Mabel whipped her head around. “Tell me you heard that.”  

Dipper rose into a hover, cocking his head towards the sound. It broke and swelled in intervals and radiated thick slurs of sadness and isolation into the air. “It sounds like someone crying. We should go check it out.”

They crept through the trees, until spying a small figure, nearly camouflaged by the foliage around her. Her hair was a thick, lush green like the pine trees around her, while her skin and clothes were a soft, light brown like patches of dirt and dead grass. Her hair fluttered in a breeze that wasn’t really there, as she sat against a rock, sobbing into her hands.

“She’s a wind spirit,” Dipper whispered to Mabel.

Mabel frowned, “Poor thing! I wonder what happened to her? We should go ask if she’s okay.”

“You’re right. Let’s go.” They walked over together, trying to wave down the wind spirit. “Hey, excuse me,” Dipper called out.

The wind spirit looked up, deep brown eyes red with tears. But when she laid eyes on him, she jumped back in terror. “Ahh! Demon! Please don’t hurt me! I’ll do whatever you want!” She cowered behind the rock, too afraid to look at Dipper but also unable to pry her gaze away.

He took a step back. “Woah, woah. I’m not gonna hurt you. We just-- we heard you crying and we wanted to make sure you were okay.” Mabel gave a warm smile and a wave, proving that the twins were no threat at all.

The wind spirit poked her head up from behind the rock, still not trusting, but willing to hear them out. “Oh. Well, I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

“You don’t sound fine,” Mabel sat down on the edge of the rock, motioning for the wind spirit to come closer. “Come on, girlfriend, let out those emotions. It’s okay, Dipper won’t hurt you. He’s too much of a baby to hurt anyone.” He scowled at that, but also didn’t protest.

The wind spirit cautiously sat herself back on the rock next to Mabel. “Well, it’s kind of embarrassing, but I was supposed to go out with this man-otaur I met the other day. And he stood me up! I got all dressed up and I waited for like three hours,” she dropped her head down in defeat. “This is the worst Valentine’s Day ever.”

Dipper hovered over a little closer, and carefully placed a hand on the wind spirit’s arm. “Lora? That’s your name, right? Lora? Anyway, I’m sorry you got stood up. That’s not cool.”

“Definitely not cool!” Mabel agree. “I’ll have to have a talk with those man-otaurs about being polite. Want Dipper and I to beat him up for you?” She smacked her fist into the palm of her hand.

“Uhm, no. Not really.”

“Well there goes my revenge plot,” Mabel muttered to herself.

That’s when a literal light bulb lit up over Dipper’s head only to disappear a few seconds later. “Hang on. What if I said we could set you up on another date?”

“I’d really rather not make deals with a strange demon,” Lora said.

“No, it wouldn’t be a deal. Just a regular favor. I mean, I technically can't do favors for people, but Mabel can. We know some gnomes who have had a pretty bad Valentine’s day too. It might not be the perfect date, but if anything, you guys wouldn’t have to be alone. Misery loves company.”

Mabel leapt up off the rock. “Yeah! Dipper’s right! Besides, you’re all dressed up with nowhere to go. What do you have to lose?”

“The gnomes? I guess those guys are pretty cool.” Lora thought about it for a moment, her cheeks flushing a deep blue. “Well… alright. I guess it won’t hurt.”

 

\------

 

When they returned to the village, the gnomes were hard at work doing damage control. The gnome police had shown up, along with a few gnome medics. Most of the scene had been closed off with DO NOT ENTER tape. Jeff sat against a tree, nursing the welt over his eye with an ice cube. He looked up at Dipper and Mabel, “I thought I told you two not to come back here? Haven’t you caused me enough pain?”

“We’re sorry,” Mabel blurted out. “Dipper and I were taking ourselves way to seriously that we forgot we were trying to do something nice for a friend.”

“And if you’ll let us try to make it up to you,” Dipper continued, “we may have found someone else who is having a really bad Valentine’s day and could use some cheering up.”

Lora waved from beside Dipper, her natural camouflage making her a little difficult to see against the foliage. “Hi. Uhm, Dipper and Mabel told me about the gnome eating troll… and the swarm of bees. I can’t believe I found someone who had a worse Valentine’s day than me.”

“Well, what happened to you,” Jeff asked.

“I got stood up my a man-otaur.”

All the gnomes in the available area all made a collective “oof” sound, sympathizing with her pain. Jeff shook his head, “The man-otaurs are a bunch of egocentric jerks if you ask me. You’re better off without them.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” Lora gave a shy smile, looking over her shoulder. Mabel winked and Dipper gave her a thumbs up. “Well, if you guys aren’t doing anything, my evening has just freed up. And before you get worried, I’m a vegetarian and I am not made of bees.”

The gnomes all shared a collective glance, nodding with interest. “Okay,” Jeff said after gauging the general reaction. “Sounds like our night just freed up too.”

 

\-----

 

As it turned out, Lora and the gnomes had a lot in common. They liked the same kind of music, long romantic walks, and had an obsession with _Gossiping Housewives._ They sat around a blue campfire and talked for hours. They were a pretty good match. (A perfect match.)

Mabel peeked over her shoulder from where the twins were sitting and pumped one fist in the air. “Match made!”

“Huh?” Dipper said. “Yeah, I guess we did do it.”

“Maybe this was destiny, and that’s why your omniscience was all screwed up. We wouldn’t have found Lora if we didn’t set the gnomes up on those horrible dates.”

“I think you’re right about that.” He shifted awkwardly on the log they shared, feeling his body start to pull out of the real world and into the mindscape. He exerted way more energy than he expected. And now, sitting on a broken deal with no candy reward, he was fading fast.

“Hey.” The twins looked around to see Jeff. “I brought you something.” He tossed a bag down at their feet. Mabel picked it up and untied it in her lap, mostly because Dipper couldn’t touch things anymore, his visage turning more and more into a flickering hologram. The bag was filled with gummy koalas, amongst other assorted candies.

“But you broke the deal,” Dipper said. “You don’t owe us anything.”

Jeff shrugged, “But you’re nice kids. And you try hard. Also Lora is… she’s a hit. We can’t get enough of her. Did you know she’s fought off two badgers at once? It’s so cool.” He rocked back on his feet and clapped his hands together, “So yeah, consider the candy a gift, or an offering, whatever you call it.”

At the mention, Dipper reached into the bag, grabbed a SnickSnack bar and popped it into his mouth, wrapper and all. Within a second his physical form steadied. “Thanks, Jeff.”

“No, thank you,” Jeff replied, shooting finger guns before heading back into the village.

Mabel grabbed for the bag of gummy koalas, ripping it open and pouring some into her mouth. She spoke between strands of sticky gelatin. “I think we did good today.”

Dipper grinned and grabbed another piece of candy. “Yeah, we did good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing the gnomes is so awkward and weird (they're kinda creepy) but it was worth it for Melissa, the sentient swarm of bees. I hope you all enjoyed a break from the madness for a silly and fun chapter!


	10. A "Nice" Family Vacation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1 year, 9 months~ post-Transcendence 
> 
> The Pines family sets sail upon the Stan O' War II, for what is definitely not a vacation. It's one of Dipper's worst nightmares.

“Nope. You can’t do it. You can’t make me go.” Dipper crossed his arms, stubbornly refusing to quit hovering over the porch.

“With enough candy we can!” Mabel pulled at his arm, digging the heels of her shoes into the wooden boards, but no matter how hard she pulled he didn’t budge. “Come on!”

“You do realize I haven’t intentionally left Gravity Falls for almost 2 years right? I leave for summonings and nothing else.”

“Which is why you need this vacation more than any of us,” she pleaded. “You’re always being Alcor and you gotta cut it out.”

“Cut what out? If people see me on the street, they’ll freak out. And I really don’t want to spend this vacation being invisible while you guys go out and have fun. I mean, the Transcendence really scared people. All this horrible stuff happened! Cities were destroyed! And if people saw me they would lose it. There is no way you can convince me to leave the Shack." 

Apparently, Stan and Ford had decided to purchase a used boat off of a fairly sleazy boat salesman (little did he know there was no one sleazier than Stanley Pines), and properly named it The Stan-o-War II. Now that summer had come around it was time to finally take the boat out for a spin, and Dipper and Mabel were meant to join them. Mabel was, obviously, excited, trying to pick out a swimsuit that would impress any nearby mermen (“I don’t think a bathing suit will be the thing that impresses any mermen,” Dipper told her. “Your personality should be enough. Also, you’ve already dated a merman.” Mabel chuckled and held another bikini up the mirror, “Dipper. There’s plenty of hot half-fish men in the sea. I just need to cast my net.”) Dipper however, was much less excited.

Even in town, surrounded by his friends, he did not like being seen by other people. In fact, only a few people outside of his family saw him regularly. Primarily Wendy and Soos (occasionally, Soos brought Melody by, or Mabel would bring over Candy and Grenda for a sleepover). But more often than not, he would disappear when anyone else came by the Shack. It took everyone a long time to adjust to his appearance and it usually took people a few minutes to remember that he wasn’t as scary as he looked. They would always jump a little when they saw him, and then spend the next 2-4 minutes working on lowering their heart rate.

“That’s why we’re not going out in public. We’re staying on the boat,” Stan grumbled as he slammed the trunk of the car shut. “And stop calling it a vacation. The only reason you kids are coming along is because we can’t trust you to stay in the Shack on your own.”

“We can’t leave them alone because they’re underage, Stanley. It would be illegal,” Ford commented, not looking up from Journal 4. “But also yes, you two can be very irresponsible.”

“Counterpoint,” Dipper said. “I no longer exist. Therefore leaving me alone in the Shack is not illegal. And without Mabel I won’t have anything to do other than read and probably sheer the nightmares. They could use a good trim.”

“The nightmares?” Stan asked.

“Irrelevant,” he brushed off the comment. “What I’m saying is that I don’t want to go, there is no amount of candy that can make me go, and you should just leave me behind. I have a bad feeling about this trip.”

Mabel frowned, “Dip. We’re going to spend some quality time as a family.”

“Actually we’re going to do some research on the particle waves created by the Transcendence,” Ford added. Mabel shot him an angry sneer, and Ford cleared his throat. “But yes, also family time.”

“See?,” Mabel said. “We’re all going together to take a break on the nice open ocean, where there will definitely be no people around to bother you, and to make sure Grunkle Ford doesn’t get eaten by a kraken.”

“Still no. There’s 28,003 situations in which this goes wrong and most of them are because of me. A few of them are particularly terrible and do involve being seen by the public. And I don't know which ones will actually happen. 0 are because Ford gets eaten by a kraken, by the way. They live in the Atlantic Ocean.”

“You’re coming.”

“No.”

“Yes you are. You wouldn’t be able to leave my side for a whole week! You’re way too neurotic for that.” Mabel grinned, and nudged her elbow against Dipper’s side. “And besides, I learned some sea shanties!”

“She’s gotcha there kid,” Stan commented. “The not leaving her side thing. Not the sea shanties-- oh sweet Moses, how many of those will she sing?”

Dipper crossed his arms in a huff. She was right, he wouldn’t be able to leave her alone for a whole week, even with Stan and Ford. “Fine." 

“Yes!” Mabel squeezed her arms around his middle. “This will be a great vacation. I promise.”

“Still not a vacation,” Stan called. “Now both of you get in the car.”

 

\------

 

After a 4 hour drive to the dock, accompanied by Mabel’s “car shanties” (“It’s like a sea shanty, but it’s all about how I hope we have enough gas and that the car doesn’t break down!” she said. After the 2nd shanty, everyone was sufficiently annoyed by just how many things Mabel could sing about and for how long.) the Pines family was not looking forward to a week of sea shanties.

Stan steered the boat out of the dock, into the fresh spray of ocean water. The boat rattled and rumbled across the bright blue ocean. The air was warm with the fresh bursts of summer, and the sky was clear with the exception of a few clouds that occasionally passed by. The moment the boat was out of sight of the dock, Mabel sketched a quick summoning circle onto the floor of the boat, prying her brother out of hiding.

Mabel leaned up against the railing of the boat and inhaled. “Ahh! Do you smell that? Salt and dead fish! That’s the smell of family bonding right there.”

Dipper leaned up against the rail beside her, “That’s… really gross, Mabes.” He peered over the edge, just far enough to get a good look at the ripples in his reflection. He actually looked less strange with the echoes of waves running through the image of his wings and claws.

“Aww come on, bro-bro,” she urged. “Don’t be such a grumpus. We’ll have a good time. It’s like camping, but on the ocean. We had so much fun camping with Mom and Dad…” she paused, suddenly remembering they were technically disowned by parents who no longer wanted them. Dipper didn’t look up to meet her eyes. She sighed and stared down at her reflection too, how different it looked from his. “Let’s just try to have a good time, okay? I know you're nervous, but maybe the bad stuff won't happen. There's still the possibility that we have a very normal, nice family vacation.”

There was. 11,028 situations in which this was the most boring trip ever. He smiled, “Okay.”

The boat jerked everyone to the left, except for Dipper, who had no need for balance. A gush of ocean water sprayed up into the air. “Water’s pretty choppy. You might wanna hang on,” Stan called over the hum of the rudder and the toss of the waves.

Another boat peeled into view, just close enough to see the other passengers on boat, and a stabbing sensation rolled into Dipper’s cut. Mabel pulled him by the arm, trying to usher him along. “Come on, you should get below deck until they pass.”

Dipper shook his head, and leaned over the railing. On the boat opposite theirs, a family tried to steer the boat across the choppy waters, and a little girl crawled too far up the railing. (26 months old.) (Unable to swim.) (Her parents are distracted.) (She’ll fall off the boat in 7 seconds.) (She’ll get caught under the boat and her life vest will catch in the rudder)-- Enough of that!

Dipper pulled himself away from Mabel. “No time to explain. Keep the boat on course, I’ll meet up with you later. I’m gonna need some kind of offering.” Every instinct told him he couldn’t do things without some kind of deal first, but he forced himself to override that instinct.

Well, at least he was able to believe he could have a normal vacation for about 45 seconds. 

Mabel looked over in time to see Dipper disappear, just as the little girl fell off the boat and into the crushing waters.

It was the first time he had been underwater post-Transcendence. It was possible the strangest sensation ever; realizing he didn’t have to hold his breath or close his eyes. He felt more than weightless, that the water wasn’t even the thing keeping him afloat.

Not that any of that mattered right now.

He moved underneath the boat, grabbing onto the little girl, catching th back of her life vest before her life’s vest could snag the rudder. The short tufts of her blonde hair fluttered around her head. He was acutely aware of her parents above wondering what had happened to their child and what that black thing could be moving under the water.

He held the girl close, breaking through the surface of the water. “It’s okay,” he muttered to her, not really caring that her parents had screamed at the sight of whatever monster had caught their child. He gave a couple of good pats to her back, followed by the thankful sound of her coughing up water. (Heart rate: a little slow, but still good) (Breathing: obviously labored, oxygen levels low) (considerable throat and lung damage: treatable with medical care) (3 more seconds and it would have been worse)

He turned to the parents, who reeled back at the sight of his inhuman eyes. “Your daughter is fine, but she needs medical attention immediately. It will be faster if I take her to shore and get help. If you go quickly it won’t take long to catch up with us.” Her parents looked at him empty eyed and confused, their brains still processing all the initial levels of fear. “Don’t be afraid. I’m here to help.” And they nodded, easily going along with his instructions. Mention, they were a little too shell shocked to start questioning things.

He gripped tightly to the girl. Teleporting would be a bad idea; she was far too young, and if teleporting made adults nauseous, it would just do horrible things to a toddler. So the next best option was to fly.

He hadn’t flown in an open space before, and never any higher that the Mystery Shack roof. Nor had he ever flown with another person before (Mabel asked on 18 separate occasions and it never seemed like a good idea). But now he didn’t have much of a choice. He took off into the air, moving just fast enough as to not waste time, but still low enough as to not have a sick toddler in his arms.

The dock below was densely populated, everyone was heading out for their supposedly nice family vacations. But that niceness was ruined by someone pointing up into the sky and screaming (they couldn’t have given him the benefit of the doubt? He reasonably could been a really big bird, or a plane?) This wasn’t going to end well, he knew that. But the little girl needed him. And he was quickly running out of time in the physical plane without an offering to justify his actions.

He landed as gracefully on the wooden dock as he could, trying to give off an aura of peace. The stares were impossible to ignore, the wide eyes horror, the jaws agape with wordless terror. A heavy sting ached in the air. He could feel all of it, every negative emotion. All of it towards him.

“This girl needs an ambulance. Someone call for one. Her parents are still at sea,” he said, trying to sound as neutral as possible.

Instead of being greeted with assistance, he was greeted with a loud, guttural scream. “What is that thing?”

The voices rushed through his ears, maybe shouting all at once or some of them dropping into his skull with a vengeance. “What is it doing with that kid?” “It’s a monster!” “It’s the devil!” “It’s lying to us!” “I think that thing is going to eat that baby!”

Dipper shook his head. “No, she fell off her boat. Please someone get help!” The crowd kept shouting. Some people starting throwing rocks and bottles. Many pulled out their cellphones to record what was happening or take pictures. Someone even started praying at him. The little girl he held certainly would have been crying, had she not done damage to her throat. He staggered back, tucking his wings close against his back. “My name is Alcor. I’m just here to help. I’m not eating her, just someone please take her.”

A man with a rifle leapt up onto the front of one of the boats anchored at the docks. He pointed the barrel directly at Dipper. “Put the baby down. Now!” The bullet wouldn’t hurt him, so there wasn’t anything to worry about, except the girl. The bullet could hurt her. So he nodded, carefully setting her down where the dock turned into the concrete.

He stepped back, both hands in the air. There was a moment of silence, followed by the crack of a gunshot and a small tuft of smoke. He barely registered the bullet that bounced off of his chest and onto the ground with a clink. And that was what really did it for the bystanders. Not that he could fly or had clawed fingers. It was that they couldn’t kill this monster with silver bullets.

He disappeared before anyone had the chance to scream again.

 

\-----

 

Dipper sat at the table, or more so the mindscape version of the table, with his head tucked into his arms. The small TV Ford wired into the boat, rattled with static of the late night news. 8 hours and 23 minutes had passed since the initial incident and things had only gotten worse since. _“Today, sailors off the coast of Oregon spotted a creature kidnapping a small child. Cryptozoologists and theologists reported in that they believe this creature to be of demonic origin. The creature referred to itself as Alcor and was scared off by bystanders, eventually abandoning the child. She is reported safe with her family, being treated in the hospital. It is advised under no circumstances to engage with the creature if seen and to report any sightings to authorities.”_

“I think you’ve had enough of that.” Mabel came by and turned off the TV, spotting Dipper hovering in a mostly holographic visage at the table.

“It doesn’t matter,” he groaned. “I have TV in my head. I can hear all the terrible things people are saying about me. There’s a whole bunch of online forums wondering what they can do to destroy me before I go out and try to eat more babies.”

“Well,” Mabel said, sliding into the booth opposite of him, “let’s change the channel. Is _Ducktective_ on? I know you love _Ducktective_.”

“Mabel, thanks for trying, but you really can’t make me feel better right now.”

“Can you at least come out of the mindscape? It looks like you could really use a super-special-sister hug right now. And I packed a whole bunch of candy.” He shook his head. Mabel side, looking out the little round window, watching the sea mist splash against it. “These people are wrong. They don’t know you like I do… they don’t know you at all. If they knew what kind of person you were, if they knew the truth about all of this, they wouldn’t say those things about you.”

“They can’t know the truth. If word ever gets out about what… who I am, it’s game over. Those other demons will latch onto that information and then kill me and you.”

Mabel sighed, reaching out to let her hand phase through him. “You did the right thing. You need to know that.”

Ford eased his way down into the hold of the boat, looking over to see Mabel starting woefully at the empty end of the table. “Is he doing alright?”

“Nope. He’s a sad little tea cup. He won’t come out of the mindscape. Not even for candy.”

“Well, then how about helping me with some research? Come on, apprentice. There’s nothing more fun than particle waves.”

Mabel looked back over at Dipper. “He still won’t come out.”

Ford rubbed at his chin in thought. “Not even for a game of _Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons_? I may have found a warding spell that will protect me from your omniscience. My traps will finally get you.”

Again, Mabel translated Dipper’s reply. “He said he’s really not in the mood for games.”

“Alright, I see you’re still pretty upset,” Ford leaned over and patted at the air where he assumed his great nephew was (he was1 foot 4 inches off). “I’ll leave you be then.” He disappeared back up the stairs.

Just then, a blue summoning circle lit up beneath Dipper’s feet, pulsing blue 3 times. He groaned, folding further into himself. Mabel popped her head under the table to look at it, “Is someone summoning you?”

“People have been figuring out how to summon me all day. I guess they’re ignoring the warnings on the news.” (The summonings happened progressively over time; starting with Mabel, then cultists who formerly worshiped Bill Cipher, the people of Gravity Falls, theologists/demonologists, cryptozoologists, cultists in general, self-proclaimed goth kids, frat guys, people who lived in towns that were previously known for supernatural happenings, and now… everyone in the whole world.) “Which is fine, I haven’t been answering them anyway. All they want is to try to get photos of me for the media or kill me.” (Ignoring the summonings was getting harder. It went against all of his primal instincts. Sort of like an itch you can’t scratch. But he continued ignoring them anyway.)

“You should answer them.”

“Mabel, I love you, but that would make me feel worse.”

“No,” she slide out of the booth, “I mean that you can go and try to convince these people that you don’t eat babies, you rescue them!”

He shook his head. “They have pretty malicious energy. I’m not going.”

“What if I went with you?”

“You can’t. People will be taking pictures, someone will take a picture of you, and someone will recognize you and ergo me, and then we’ll both be dead.”

A smile flashed across her face. “No they won’t!” She launched herself into one of the tiny backrooms of the boat that Stan and Ford converted into a bedroom for Mabel, and came out a minute later wearing a hot pink cotton surgical, heart-shaped sunglasses, and her hair pulled up. She slung the baseball bat over her shoulder and beamed with pride. “See! Instant disguise!”

Dipper looked up only long enough to catch a glimpse of her. “You look like you came out of the pink apocalypse.”

“Thanks!”

“We’re not going. I don’t feel like being greeted by acrimonious crowds right now.”

She sighed, baseball bat lagging off her shoulder. “Fine,” she took a few shuffled steps back towards her bedroom, and then Dipper felt the sudden burst of energy radiate from her. “But I don’t need your permission to do anything! I can teleport all on my own! Later, broseph!” She gave him a quick salute, before rotating her foot about 10 degrees to the right, and disappearing into the light of a golden flame.

Dipper immediately, sat upright just in time to watch her go. “Mabel, no! Auughh!” And he teleported after her.

 

\------

 

A crowd had formed in the abandoned parking lot of some town in the Midwest where the summoning circle was, a couple of priests standing in front as if they could exorcise whatever Dipper was (they could not). Mabel already stood in the center of the summoning circle looking down at was… animal caracasses. Pigs… of course they had to pick pigs. The smell of open flesh and fresh blood permeated the air around them. Thick sloppy blood oozed over the blue glow of the summoning circle. He didn’t want to look too long. That if he looked, maybe he would start to enjoy it.

He couldn’t believe that’s what they used to summon him. Didn’t they do any kind of reading? Didn’t they know he hated blood and death and would have answered for a chocolate bar? And what was he supposed to do will animal corpses?

A few seconds after he arrived, cameras flashed and people screamed either in horror or just pure shock from seeing the summoning.

He wrapped an arm around Mabel. He could see her eyes through the tint of her glasses, the tears welling up inside. “Come on, we’re going.”

She yanked away from him, almost stepping in a thick puddle of blood. “No! You need to tell them not to do this! That they’re jerks!”

As she pulled free, the crowd shouted, both speaking to each other and into the livestreams on their cellphones. “This time it kidnapped a girl!” “Let her go!” “What will it do to her?”

Mabel shifted back and shook her head, “What? No! My name is Mizar. Alcor didn’t kidnap me, I came here with him!”

“The demon must be forcing her to say that!”

“He didn’t!” she shouted over them, taking a step outside of the summoning circle. “Please, you need to stop! He isn’t like this! Stop with the summonings. He’s not a bad person!”

A random bystander wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into the crowd. The baseball bat slipped out of her hand. “I’ve got the girl!” he shouted, holding Mabel tight against her struggles.

“What? No! Let me go!” she cried.

“Destroy the demon!” Someone else shouted.

An splatter of water swung through the air, scattering itself across Dipper, and the moment he did he dropped down to his knees in pain. He gripped to his arm, suddenly aware of the sting that ran up his body. Smoke hissed off his skin where it touched. Blessed water. Another arch sprinkled across his side and shoulder, causing him to wince again. “I didn’t do anything! STOP,” he growled, trying to rise to his feet before being hit again.

Mabel pulled against the arms of her restrainer, “Stop it! You’re hurting him!” Of course, no one stopped. They weren’t going to listen to her. They thought she was a crazed victim. A spark flew up in her hands and trailed up her arms, still cold to the touch, but enough to frighten the man away and for her to make a mad dash towards Dipper.

Shadows curled out from underneath people’s feet and from around cars, causing them to shriek and stumble in fear. Dipper snarled, showing off far too many of his sharpened teeth. “STOP IT!” Mabel hadn’t seen him like this since their run in with the Blind Eye, except now he was stronger, and far more upset. She grabbed at her baseball bat, threatening anyone who came a step too close.

She tugged at his coat, dragging him into an embrace, covering his body with hers. The smoke where they hurt him wafted into her face, as she stepped into the summoning circle. The circle lit up gold as she landed them back on the deck of the Stan O’ War II.

Mabel dropped to her knees, whipping off the mask and sunglasses. The sounds of Stan and Ford rushing towards them muffled in her ears. She put both her hands on Dipper’s cheeks pulling his face up to look at hers. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

Mabel watched as golden tears bubbled up in his eyes and dripped down his face. He sniffed, at looked at her with painful blackened eyes. “I didn’t do anything,” he muttered.

She yanked him into a close embrace, careful of where the blessed water stung his skin. His clawed hands pressed against her back, perhaps too tightly, but that didn’t really matter. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. “I promise I’ll listen to you from now on. I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t answer, he just cried into her shoulder.

Stan knelt down between them, “What happened to you?”

Mabel pressed her cheek up against the side of Dipper’s head. “A lot of bad people.”

\------

 

For the next few days of their journey, Dipper remained nowhere to be found, definitely hiding out in the mindscape. Mabel gave up on the idea that he would ever come out of the duration of the trip. She mostly spent the days helping Ford with his experiment, barely singing along to sea shanties, and watching the news.

The twins were all anyone wanted to talk about. They made every news station, every late night talk show, or teen gossip station. Everyone had a (mostly negative) opinion about what happened. The wouldn’t stop talking about the demon that ate babies and kidnapped teenage girls. Most news stations advised you to stay indoors. Schools around the country were cancelled. Crusades of self-made demon hunters patrolled the streets.

Soos called shortly after it all happened to make sure they were okay. Apparently he tried summoning Dipper multiple times after seeing the news, but he never showed. (“Things actually aren’t okay,” she told him. “Dipper got hurt pretty bad. Physically and emotionally. I think it could be a couple weeks before he shows himself again, he’s not really in the mood for talking to people. Even us.”)

As for Dipper, he floated around in the depths of the mindscape, wondering if he should ever come out of hiding at all. He could spend the rest of eternity in there if he really wanted. And it didn’t seem like that bad of an idea.

The summonings came and went, most of them violent and malicious, the rest all desperate pleas from his family. He answered none of them. He just wanted to disappear.

And then there was another summoning, a little different from the rest. It felt warm and hopeful, kind even. And it was vaguely familiar. (This one you have to answer. Don’t ignore it.)

So he went.

 

He found himself in the cozy living room of a nuclear family. The air smelled like residue of having already eaten dinner and cleaned all the dishes. A warm yellow lamplight filled the room, illuminating the mother (Ingrid) who sat on the couch, fretting over a little girl who was busy rocking a babydoll. The father (Kyle) stepped back from the summoning circle, careful of the candles and his daughter, the blood streaming down his arm.

It was the little girl from the boat accident. She looked curiously at Dipper for a moment, and then resumed her coloring. Dipper, however, went wide-eyed with fear at the family. He shrunk back, wings curling around his shoulders.

“Don’t be afraid! We don’t want to hurt you or make fun of you!” The father held up both hands, as if to beckon Dipper back. It was odd to hear someone imply that he was afraid of them, because it was definitely true. He had become afraid of humans. The father spoke carefully, as if trying not to frighten off a startled animal. “We wanted to say thank you. You saved our daughter’s life.”

Dipper paused, taking a step back. “You’re welcome,” his word came out in a hesitant whisper. Why were they doing this? Why were they being kind to him?  “I’m happy to see that your daughter is doing well.” 

“What’s your name,” the mother asked. “I heard it on the news but I don’t remember it.”

“Alcor.”  

“Alcor,” she tested out the name, as if she were speaking the name of God or something. “Is it okay if we ask you a question?” she asked again.

“Yes.”

“Demons aren’t supposed to be kind, or do things without a price. Why did you save her?”

Dipper felt very small, not just because he hadn’t grown since the Transcendence, but because no one really cared about who he was or why he did things a certain way. He didn’t know what to say, or what to do with his now useless hands, folding around and fidgeting. “Because I couldn’t sit back and do nothing when I had the ability to help her.” He tried not to look at them, tucking his hands behind his back like the shy child he had to admit he was. “I’m not like the other demons. I don’t want to be a bad person.”

“People are afraid of things they don’t understand,” the father said. “We’ve tried explaining to the media that you’re a good person, but fear is a powerful thing. But we aren’t afraid, okay? You’re our hero. We wouldn’t have a daughter if not for you. And we’re sorry that you’ve only been met with fear and hatred for what you did. It’s unfair.”

Dipper nodded, watching the little girl (Cassie) rock the baby doll back and forth. And it finally struck him that he was responsible for her sitting there, continually rocking her doll. “Thank you,” he muttered. “I needed to hear that.” 

It was the first time anyone offered him something he actually needed. Something he didn’t have to suck the emotional warmth out of, it was just given to him. 

The mother rose from the couch, holding out her hand, but not to make a deal. Instead, she rested it just against his upper arm. She smiled at him so softly. “If you need to see some friendly faces, we’ll be here.”

“And if you ever need anything, like literally anything, please let me know. Just… don’t use blood next time. It’s kind of gross.  Candy works better.”

They smiled. “We will.”

Things were pretty bad, Dipper had to admit that. But if he could do this one good thing, if this one good family could like him, maybe there was a chance things could change one day. 

 

\------

 

Dipper went back to the boat in the middle of the night. The soft lull of the waves had rocked Mabel into a delicate sleep, but the moment he returned, she slipped into wakefulness-- as if she were becoming more aware of his presence. “Dipper, are you back?” she mumbled.

“Yeah, I’m back,” he slipped over to her bunk.

She reached out with one hand, her fingers getting caught in the curls of his hair. “You’re material? Did someone summon you?”

“Mhm. That girl’s parents. They weren't afraid of me and they... thanked me?" 

A lazy smile pressed into Mabel’s mouth. “They know that you’re a good person. There was no reason for them to be scared of you.” She yawned, stretching out in her sliver of bed. “Do you feel better?”

“No, not really. I don’t think I’ll ever feel good about this.”

She nodded, head nudging its way into the pillow. “I’m sorry I made it worse. I forced you to come on this trip and then I forced you to go on that summoning and… I really ruined your life didn’t I?"

“No,” he whispered, hands lingering at the edge of her blanket. “It’s not your fault. I don’t regret the choice I made. I knew from the moment I decided to save her things were going to be bad. We’ll just have to lay low for a while, try to assess the damage.”

The words choked themselves out of Mabel’s throat. “More bad things are going to start happening aren’t they? More people, and demons, and monsters are going to try to kill or capture you, aren’t they?”  

“Yes,” he replied. “And I don't know what to do anymore.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this took a slightly more intense turn than I expected. Poor Dipper. Poor Mabel. What a nightmare.
> 
> In truth, I have a few gripes with TAU that I'm looking to resolve 1.) The transition into post-Transcendence life is a little too easy. Sure, Gravity Falls exists in a world where there is magic everywhere, but most people don't know about it. I'd like to make that transition a lot harder and scarier for Dipper and Mabel. They, too, are still adjusting to this magic world. Whereas characters like Ford would be pretty well seasoned in it, and therefor is rarely shocked.  
> 2.) Dipper is an anxious mess. The Transcendence should bring out the worst in him, and most people view that as becoming more like Bill (as they are foils of each other) but I see it that his anxious side, the parts that lack confidence and self-compassion, would be emphasized. It's the thing he struggles with throughout the show and I think should be represented in the fic.  
> 3.) Mabel should also kicked into high gear because she tries to make up for what Dipper lacks. Her confidence is abundant and she stays hopeful when he doesn't. But this also makes her selfish and reckless, thinking that she can make everything better when she definitely cannot.  
> 4.) This AU deals with so many questions that are sometimes ignored, "What would it mean to be immortal?" "What does it mean to be human?" "How much of life can you control?" "What is identity and how does it change?" "How do we use knowledge and when is it too much?" etc. I think every chapter of my fic should ask a question relative to our own lives, even if the story blows that question out of proportion.


	11. Team Alcor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1 year 11 months~ post Transcendence 
> 
> Dipper gets captured by a mysterious man with a magical amulet. Now it's up to Mabel, Wendy, and Soos to save him as a team. 
> 
> //slight spoilers for Lost Legends

Mabel, Wendy, and Soos all slammed their hands on the table. “Eat it! Eat it!”

Since Alcor became public knowledge, the world started changing. The summonings had increased by 202.37%, though Dipper answered maybe 5% of them. Only for family, friends, and for people in desperate need (in which case he would try to go in and out before anyone noticed). It took its toll on him too. It was like someone was constantly ringing a doorbell or calling on the phone in the back of his head. Demons weren’t supposed to look tired, but Dipper did, weakened by the lack of magical energy. His powers weakened drastically. He couldn’t hold physical form for as long, his flames were usually small and flickering. (“You should try to take a few more,” Mabel urged. “I know you’re still scared and upset but you can’t keep doing this! You’re getting weaker! There have to be a few easy ones you can take.” He’d always shake his head, “I’m just not ready.”)

It also meant that he had to lay low. If he were ever to be seen in Gravity Falls by an outsider, it would mean tracing his location back to the town, to the Shack, and to his family. He spent most of his time hiding out in the attic or wandering around the Shack completely invisible. He didn’t even want to go out into town anymore. Mabel could see the hesitation simmer off of him like a heat mirage. He hadn’t been the same person since the vacation. The good news was that his family was very good at trying to keep the status quo.

The three continued to chant, their pounding fists rattling the table and walls in the kitchen. “Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!” Their chanting moved with the rhythm of the rain pattering against the windows.

Dipper grabbed the sponge off the dinner plate between his thumb and index finger. It smelled like the inside of a drain pipe and oozed a thick brown sludge onto the plate? “Did you cover this in hot sauce, leave it outside for 22 hours and 13 minutes, put it in the microwave, and then swipe peanut butter over it?”

Soos nodded, “We call it danger toast!”  

“Awww…” Mabel grumbled to herself, “this game is no fun when you know what we did to it.”

“I can’t help it. I know most things,” he shrugged.

“Still,” Mabel replied, “there’s got to be some way I can hide stuff from you. Mystery Food would be way more fun if you had to guess.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, sister. If there’s some secret spell or magic item that makes me not know about stuff, I wouldn’t know about it… because you know… that’s what it does.” He looked back at the sponge and grimaced, “What I don’t know is why you guys find this game fun.”

Wendy pounded her hand against the table one more time, “Stop stalling and eat the sponge!”

Dipper cringed, closed his eyes, dropped the sponge into his mouth, and swallowed. Mabel had quickly learned he could eat things that weren’t even food, simply because his body didn’t process food the normal way anymore. At first it was just an experiment: could he really eat anything? (Yes, preferably things that were offered to him.) And then it turned into one of Mabel’s wacky games for her own amusement. He really didn’t appreciate being used as her plaything, but anything was better than sitting in his own misery.

He shuddered, “I hope you guys know I can still taste things and that was really gross.”

Wendy chuckled, “Yeah, that’s the point, dummy. Gross things are funny.”

“I wish I had the ability to eat whatever I wanted.” Soos counted the items on his fingers, “Grass clippings, paint, laundry pods, and rhubarb!”

“Rhubarb is already edible, Soos,” Dipper replied.

“I don’t know. That sounds pretty fake, dude.”

“Alright, hurry it up in here, your lunch breaks are almost over,” Stan said, stalking into the kitchen. He looked down at the grimey plate on the table and Mabel setting down another one with a lump of stale cereal, glue, and bacon grease. “And what did I say about playing Mystery Food without me?”

“Aww come on, Stan,” Dipper whined. “Stop encouraging this.”

Mabel laughed and poked at his cheek, “We love you too much to stop tormenting you.”  

Stan chuckled, “Sorry, kiddo, but your pain is hilarious. But seriously, all of you, gift shop now. We got a lotta tourists coming in. Dipper, if I see you, you’re grounded. Turn invisible.”

Everyone groaned and shuffled back into gift shop. The twins shared a glance with each other and shrugged, as Dipper faded away into the mindscape. “Another round of Mystery Food after closing?” she asked.

“Can’t we play something normal? Like poker or charades?”

“Nope,” she gave him a playful smile and a wink. It was hard to be mad at Mabel.

He sighed, but smiled back. “Your deal is my command.”

 

\-----

 

During everyone’s shifts, Dipper tried to find new ways to occupy himself. Usually he would hang out with Mabel behind the register, waiting for her to occasionally mumbled something to him or to write it on a pad of paper.

He hovered over her left shoulder, watching the crowd of tourists shift through the items. He rolled his eyes, “Don’t look now, but there’s a weird guy in the Shack.”

She kept her eyes trained on the register, and whispered under her breath. “The flamboyant cowboy or the guy who spits into a bottle and then drinks it?”

“No, this is a different guy. He’s got a really intense look on his face.”

A customer came by, setting down her I FELL INTO A MYSTERIOUS CRATER OUTSIDE THE MYSTERY SHACK t-shirt onto the counter. Mabel scanned it, and punched a few numbers into the register, finally looking up at the mysterious man. He wore all black; pants, shirt, and jacket with two silver guns and a glass bottle plastered to his hips. But none of that was the strangest part, it was the bright red glass eye he wore strung around his neck. He moved about the gift shop, each of his motions calculated, before looking at Mabel with intense eyes.

The customer paid for her shirt and Mabel whispered again to Dipper as she pretended to tie her shoe. “What’s this guy’s deal, do you know?”

Dipper looked back at the man, and bit down on his bottom lip. “No.” He blinked and looked away. The longer he looked at the strange man, the more his head would spin.

“Wait. Really?”

“Not a single idea.”

“Is he human?”

“As far as I can tell.”

“As far as you can tell?” She paused for a moment, “There isn’t something wrong with your omniscience is there? I’m seriously worried, I think not taking summonings is starting to hurt you.” (It is-- but you’re just too stubborn to listen.) She stood back up to resume her duties.

He stared at the mysterious stranger, their eye contact  sharp and relentless. “Something’s not right here, I can’t read this guy at all.” He paused in thought. “I have a theory. Stay here.”

Another customer came by with an armful of Mr. Mystery bobbleheads and dumped them onto the counter. She glanced at Dipper as if to say ‘wait, what are you thinking?’ but by that time he was already phasing through the walls with a shrug. She shook her head and huffed out a sigh, returning to the register.

 

\-----

 

Dipper paced outside of the Mystery Shack, or more so he went through the motions of pacing while floating 2 feet off the ground. The rain had stopped, leaving the dirt and grass outside to turn into a dewey-scented mud.

Something was definitely off about this guy in the shack. Sure, Dipper wasn’t great at using his omniscience but no human should be immune to his sight. He could tell you everything about everyone in the Mystery Shack at that moment if he wanted to, but the man in all black? Nothing on that guy. A complete blank slate.

Theory: this guy had some kind of spell that makes him immune to omniscience, and seeing him at the Mystery Shack was really bad news. He ceased his pacing, and peeked his head up into the gift shop window. He waved at Mabel through the glass, who widened her eyes and hunched her shoulders. ‘What are you doing?’ she mouthed.  

‘Waiting,’ he mouthed back. And then he pointed to the crowd of people, and put his other hand up over his eyes like a visor. ‘Do you see the guy anywhere?’

Mabel scanned her eyes across the room, tilting her head and leaning to the side to look around the crowds. She shook her head. Dipper took a step away from the window, and bit down on the claw of his thumb.

A shadow arched up around him. A gravelly voice curled around from behind, “Found you, Dreambender.” Dipper summoned a flame in his hand, feeling it course around his fingers just to have it put out into a puff of sparkling ash. Dipper turned around just to be greeted by something wet and burning splashed into his face. He reeled back, skin burning away into smoke as he tried to wipe the blessed water from his eyes. The only thing he could think to do was scream out in pain.

The man chuckled, placing the empty glass vial on to his belt. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulling out a small piece of paper between his thumb and index finger. “This is much easier than I thought it would be. I overestimated you,” he tossed the piece of paper to the ground.

Dipper could barely see it through the tendrils of smoke spiraling up from his body and the tears in his eyes. It wasn’t until the paper landed at his feet that he could make out the intricate pattern on the paper. A binding circle.

The circle glew a bright blue, lifting itself off the page and expanding across the open air. Dipper felt himself stick to it like glue. He had only been caught in a binding circle a few times, always set up by Mabel as ridiculous pranks or training segments. But they were always a minor inconvenience. This one was different. It spiralled out underneath his feet, creating a false floor while the edged sprung up into a snow globe like dome. Dipper collapsed under the weight of it, dropping to his hands and knees. He slammed his hands against the barrier, trying to claw his way free, but the circle would merely richet his actions back.

“Mizar!” he screamed, pounding more and more against the barrier. “Mizar, can you hear me?”  

The man in the suit laughed, the red eye around his neck seeming to wink with glee. “I can’t believe you’re the little half-breed everyone is so worried about.” Dipper bashed harder at the circle. “Aww… I could sit here and watch you struggle all day. But time is money.”

The man snapped his fingers and the circle collapsed in on itself. “No, no” Dipper shouted as the binding circle grew smaller and smaller. “Mizar!” The circle disappeared, leaving only the piece of paper, still glowing blue. The man placed it back into his breast pocket, adjusted his jacket, and continued on down the dirt path as if nothing had occurred.

Moments later, Mabel busted through the front door, darting around the Shack in a panic. “Dipper? Dipper?” Her breath stung the inside of her chest as she ran. The dirt and grass clumped to the bottom of her shoes as she ran. “Dipper, where are you? Are you okay?”

She poked her head up through the window where he was standing just moments ago. No sign of him. She looked down at her feet, the flecks of mud caking into her shoes and socks. Something glittered in the breaking sunlight from within the mud. Mabel dropped down to her knees, scooping some it up with her middle and index finger. A powder that looked like ashes crushed diamonds. Her breath caught, “Demonic flame… oh no.” Where the ash sprinkled against the ground, a pair of footprints disappeared from the Shack. “Oh no. Dipper!” He had completely disappeared. But there was a tug in her chest, some deep connection that felt like a string connecting her to him. He was still out there.  

“Mabel?” She heard Soos call, as he and Wendy rushed out into the yard. “What’s going on, hambone?”

She shook her head, staring at the useless summoning circle. “I think that weird guy in the suit took Dipper.”

 

\-----

 

Mabel scrambled around the attic, simultaneously tying her hair up and trying to switch into less muddy shoes. She grabbed her baseball bat out from under her bed, careful of the nails jutting out from the wood. Of course Dipper had to get captured by some crazy guy who looked like a 90’s rock star. She told him over and over again to regain his strength, even if it meant answering summonings. But he was stubborn and now she had to go save him from something she didn’t understand.

“You guys keep an eye on the Shack, I’ll go rescue Dipper,” she instructed to Wendy and Soos, who watched her from the opposite side of the bedroom.

Wendy shook her head, “No way, we’re coming with you. Stan and Ford will be able to take care of the Shack themselves.”

“You guys can’t come!” Mabel snapped. “It’s too dangerous! Some of the stuff we might run into will be seriously messed up! I can at least do demon magic, but you guys could be completely defenseless.” She slid her face mask on and headed for the door until Wendy cut her off.

“Come on Mabel, remember how we took on those Mandobices? This will be a snap.” She twirled her axe around her fingers and slipped on a pair of Mabel’s novelty sunglasses, “Just call me Wendigo, demon hunter.”

“Yeah and I… I’m Soos!” He looked over at Wendy, “Do I need a disguise? I can try to grow a moustache.” He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated.

The baseball bat dropped down Mabel’s shoulders. “You guys really want to go on this mission with me?”

“Well, yeah,” Wendy replied casually. “You and Dipper are our best friends. If he’s in trouble, we want to help both of you.”

Mabel bit down on the inside of her cheek. Wendy and Soos weren’t going to take no for an answer, they would go to the ends of the earth to save Dipper (and then some). And she would do the same for them. “Then let’s do it.” She put her hand out, “Team Alcor.”

Wendy and Soos put their hands on top of hers. “Team Alcor.”

 

\------

 

The summoning circle sprung back open, landing Dipper in the middle of unfamiliar territory. He took a moment to reorient himself, usually he had no problem figuring out his geographic location, but this time it was a little more difficult. Whatever was blocking his omniscience was doing a good job.

The room was dark, mostly illuminated by the muted glow of waxy candles. The air smelled like hot sewage and steam, adding to his sense of repulsive claustrophobia. And then there was well-- everything else. Lesser demons writhing in cages and summoning circles much like his, screaming out in agony at their entrapment. Silver weapons like the walls, slick with polish and something that made his stomach churn and a bitter taste enter his mouth.

He pressed his hands up against the circle, trying to find any way to escape. Any breach in the circle, any doorway left open. “Come on,” he tried to push the circle to its breaking point, but instead it flung him back, knocking his head against the opposite side of the dome.

The man in black laughed, coming down a set of stairs on the opposite side of whatever dungeon he was trapped in. “I mean it, I could really watch you forever. It’s like watching a goldfish knock into the walls of its tank.”

Dipper snarled, bearing each point of his teeth. His voice echoed and screeched, “WHO ARE YOU? WHERE AM I? WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?”

“For a demon, you sure do ask a lot of questions.” He turned his attention away from Dipper and over to the cages of lesser demons, opening the locks to let them momentarily break past their binding circles. “Come out, my pets. That’s right, I’m home. I didn’t forget about you.” The things scuttled on their many legs, winding over his feet and screaming for attention with their wide mouths of many teeth and green slime. Something that looked much like a nightmare version of a centipede.

“Mandobices?” Dipper asked. It had been a little less than a year since he and Mabel teamed up to fight them off in the high school. “Were you the one who sent those after us?”

The man patted one of the Mandobices on the head. “Well at least you figured one thing out on your own. Yes, I did.” He sighed and paced himself over to Dipper’s binding circle.

“Why did you do it? Why haven’t you attacked us since then?”

He rolled his eyes, “Again with the questions. You are absolutely irritating.”

“Tell me what’s going on and I won’t have to ask questions anymore.”

The man groaned, “Fine.” His fingers slipped around the eye that dangled around his neck. “I’ve had my eye on you for awhile now.” He pulled up a chair from a nearby work bench, one of the Mandobices slithering over his feet like a lazy cat. “My name is Jarax, I’m a bounty hunter from dimension 93:^. I was hired by a certain group of demon purists to aid in your capture and execution. And, honestly, I’d like to have the most powerful group of demons in the multiverse on my side.”  

“But why attack once and then stop?”

“Mandobices aren’t the smartest demons in the world, they get easily confused. They are, however, excellent trackers. Their job was to follow you and strike when you were at your weakest, but your little possession trick confused them. Most of my horde was killed when you and your sister combined so easily. I decided to bide my time, gather more Mandobices, and wait for the moment in which you were weak enough to warrant a second attack. Looks like my patience paid off.”

Dipper had stopped paying attention two sentences ago. “How do you know she’s my sister?”

Jarax leaned back in his chair, “I know quite a few things about you, Dipper Pines.” If Dipper still had a functional human heart, it would have sank in his chest. “It’s my job to know everything about my target. From the moment my Mandobices tracked you down I knew who you were, where you lived, the names of your loved ones. You’ve been too careless and trusting. It’s a wonder you’ve survived this long. But I can’t be too harsh on you. I do have the advantage.” He gestured to the eye hanging around his neck.

The longer Dipper looked at it, the more it made his head spin. “What is that?”

“This is a god’s eye. They are the most ancient, most powerful beings in the universe. But, like most things, they do occasionally die. Their body parts hold vast amounts of power, especially their eyes which grant the ability to see into other dimensions and hide from omniscient beings. It allows me to so easily manipulate lesser demons without fear of them trying to eat me.”

Dipper leaned in, pressing his hands against the front of the binding circle. “Mabel will come for me. I hope you know that. And when she does she will destroy you.”

Jarex scoffed, a sly smile splitting across his face. “I’m sure she’ll try. But she’ll never make it here on her own and you are completely unable to help her.” He rose from his chair and headed towards the stairs. Dipper’s breath quickened, an involuntary reaction that rested somewhere between his anger and fear. “Even she does find you, Metus and the other purists will be here soon to kill you. Enjoy your last moments alive, kid.”

 

\-----

 

Mabel, Wendy, and Soos all held hands in the summoning circle. Mabel stared down the summoning circle, permanently painted onto the floor of her bedroom. Her breath escaped all at once. She had no idea where Dipper could be, all she had was the feeling that he was somewhere. All she had to do was follow her instincts.

“Mabel?” Wendy asked. “Are you okay?”

It occurred to Mabel that she was crushing their hands in hers. Wendy and Soos started at her with expectant eyes. They had taken a few moments to throw together more proper disguises, Wendy with her obvious red hair tucked up into a beanie and her axe hidden by a coat, and Soos wearing a fedora and a fake mustache (he still didn’t quite understand how this whole disguise thing worked).

She swallowed, mouth already dry. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

Wendy let go of her hand for a moment, and placed it on her shoulder. “We’ll find Dipper. Okay? He’s going to come home and finish that game of Mystery Food no matter what.” She removed her hand and held it back out in offering.

Mabel took it and straightened her back. “Alright, Team Alcor. I have no idea where we are going or what we will see on the other side, but if we work together anything is possible,” she said. “Oh and one more thing. Have either of you teleported before, because heads up it will make you throw up the first few times.” They both shook their heads. “Whelp. Here we go.”

The summoning circle lit up gold, and Mabel felt the little guiding string in her gut tug and launch them out into the unknown. She simply willed the circle to bring her as close to Dipper as it could. She had never teleported other people before, and it was a rather unpleasant feeling, having to concentrate on keeping her own body in one piece and then having to worry about everyone else fragmenting into tiny pieces.

When they arrived, it felt as if Mabel felt as if she had crash landed on a foreign planet. She barely managed to land on her feet. Wendy and Soos weren’t as lucky, barely able to rise to their feet. Soos threw up in a nearby pile of trash. “Is everyone okay?” she asked. Wendy and Soos groaned in response, but a groan was better than nothing.

Mabel found herself in some kind of back alley way, hidden by piles of garbage and wreckage. But something wasn’t normal. She tiptoed towards the front of the alley, peeking her head around the corner of a building. The streets clustered with supernatural creatures, some she had seen before in Gravity Falls like gnomes, unicorns, or eyeball bats. But some completely unfamiliar like a creature with three different sets of arms, legs, and faces passing a mysterious suitcase to a floating head. A shadowy figure holding up a sign reading SEPARATED FROM BODY, COLD, HUNGRY, ANYTHING WILL HELP.  Nearby a pale white elf stood behind a makeshift stand, holding bottles into the air yelling, “Moonshine! Getcha moonshine here! Just harvested from the moon last night!”

“Wait, I think I know where we are,” Mabel muttered as Soos and Wendy finally came out to rejoin her. “This is the crawlspace, it’s like a paranormal blackmarket. I remember this from when that monster took my face.”

Wendy turned, “Took your what?”

Mabel shook her head, “It’s a long story. The issue is that humans aren’t supposed to be down here. You need a key to get in, or in our case, teleportation. But how are we supposed to know where to go?”

Soos walked out into the open street, “Let’s just go ask for directions. Someone should know the guy we’re looking for.”

“Soos! No!” Wendy cried out, but it was already too late. Mabel hopped out into the street after him, hiding behind wagons full spare body parts and 4-headed barbershop quartets. She slipped her baseball bat out from her backpack, gripping it carefully in her hand.

Soos walked up to the pale elf selling moonshine. “Hey, dude. I need to ask you for some directions.” Mabel pressed her back up against the side of the stand and held her breath, eavesdropping on the conversation.

“What can I help you with, Mr…” the seller looked up and peered suspiciously at Soos. “Mr. Naked-Mole-Man?”

Soos laughed. “Yeah. So, you see, I’m looking for a friend of mine, he’s sort of a demon and he may have been kidnapped by some weird guy in all black. And now we’re on a big mission to rescue him, but we don’t know where to look.”

The elf’s eyes shifted. “Did you say demon?” He leaned in on his elbows and whispered, “Listen, bud, demons don’t go over well down here. Most people here have had their home dimensions destroyed. They’re refugees. So unless you want trouble, I’d just leave.”

Soos shook his head and grinned. “Oh no. He’s not like that at all. He’s a really good guy. You might have heard of him. His name’s Alcor.” The moment Soos said it, the street went completely silent, emphasized occasionally by the soft hiss of the name. Alcor. Everything froze like a photo, all eyes narrowing down on Soos. Wendy peeled out of the alley way, hand poised for her axe. “Come to think of it, I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

Mabel sprung into action, leaping onto the moonshine seller’s table, brandishing her bat into the air. “Alright, listen up! Just tell us who captured Alcor and where I can find him and no one gets hurt!”

“So you mean it?” asked the homeless shadow. “You’re with Alcor the Dreambender?”

“We’re only here to rescue him,” Mabel yelled. “We don’t want any trouble with you, I swear.”

The silence penetrated a moment longer. A fairy flew closer to Mabel, radiating a thick pink light. “So that must make you Mizar… wow. You guys are heroes.”

Mabel paused and lowered the baseball bat, “What do you mean heroes?”

The elf cleared his throat, “Wow, you guys are pretty out of the paranormal politics loop.” He looked up at Mabel with bright silver eyes. “We heard about what you did. You fought Bill Cipher, killed him, and then Alcor transcended and took his place.” Mabel pursed her lips together and nodded. “Bill’s done more damage to the multiverse than anyone,” he gestured to spray painted graffiti reading POST NO BILLS. “You helped save countless other dimensions from Bill’s destruction. We owe everything to you.” The crowd nodded along with a serious intent.

“Who do you think took him,” asked the mysterious floating head.

“Some weird guy wearing all black with this necklace of a funny looking eye,” Mabel answered. The crowd hissed and muttered to themselves. “Wait, do you know who he is?”

“That’s definitely Jarax,” replied the elf. “He’s a bounty hunter with no concern for anyone but himself. He’s been in tight with some demons who I hear have a vendetta to kill Alcor. He’s your guy, no doubt. He just came through here not long ago.”

“His hideout isn’t far from here,” added the homeless shadow. “Go two blocks north, turn left on Elm Street. It should be on your right. If you see the Red Room you’ve gone too far.”

Mabel looked out onto the street. It had never occurred to her that her family’s sacrifice, everything they went through during and after Weirdmageddon didn’t just impact Gravity Falls or planet Earth. Their actions were on the multi-dimensional scale. She crammed the bat back into her backpack, watching the faces of every supernatural creature, every refugee from Bill’s destruction looking back at her. “Uhm. Thank you,” she told them. She leapt down from the table, flanked at both sides by Wendy and Soos.

“Alcor and Mizar are the only thing standing between us our world and total demonic collapse,” said the elf. “Everything is in your hands now.”

Mabel felt the sense of something large and foreboding rising over her spine. “Come on, guys. Let’s go save my brother.”

 

\-----

Dipper laid curled up at the base of the binding circle, tracing his finger over the intricate pattern within, following each line of its own secret language. Every circle had to have a name or symbol in it, like some sort of demonic calling card. Mabel created a simple but nice one with a pine tree in the center (“This will really stick it to Bill!” she said. “Nothing would make him more upset than to see you take some ownership of that silly nickname.”) But this was far more elaborate than hers, every line, every detail added with the intention to trap him inside its web.

He turned onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, leaky pipes and moldy wood boards. He wasn’t sure how long it had been. His sense of time was completely messed up by the binding circle, not to mention his already weakened state. He should have listened to Mabel and taken on some summonings, just to keep his strength up.

Footsteps echoed down the stairs, jerking Dipper into an upright position. Jarax entered into the basement of the building, thankfully alone. “You are a skittish little thing, aren’t you? Relax, the purists haven’t forgotten about you.” He leaned over to examine Dipper through the barrier. “You’re not looking so good, half-breed.”

“You won’t get away with this,” he snarled.

Jarax laughed, and poked his finger against the edge of the barrier, as if trying to startle an animal in a tank. “Mhm. Is that right? Well, if I recall, you said your sister would be here to save you and… I haven’t seen her at all.” Dipper said nothing, letting the labor of his breath be the only response. “Oh, so now you decide to be quiet? You are so hard to figure out.”

“Mabel is coming.”

“I’m sure she is, but will she make it? I’ve hunted things much older and more powerful than you. She wouldn’t be a challenge.”

“For someone who has supposedly been tracking us, you don’t know enough about Mabel.”  

“We’ll see about that.”

 

\------

 

“Uhg,” Mabel groaned, looking up at one of the many brick buildings on the street. “It’s the Red Room,” she pointed towards a the neon red sign that flashed in the velvet lined window, “we went too far. Let’s turn it back around.”

Soos looked up at the rows of illegal potions dealers, bars, and haunting services. “Everything down here is crazy-bonkers-creepy.”

Mabel was starting to run out of patience with herself as she stalked down the stone streets. Whenever her walk her bones seemed to crack with stress like the ticking of a watch. She kept trying to follow her instincts, hoping that maybe there was some connection that would lead her back to Dipper, but nothing seemed to come of it.

“I think I found it,” Wendy called, snapping Mabel out of her own thoughts. She pointed at the window of one of the buildings, beckoning them over. Mabel rushed over, crouching down next to Wendy at the base of one of the buildings.

It didn’t look like much from the outside. The windows were smeared with a thin layer of dirt, through which an abandoned front desk and a few chairs could be seen. A sign hung over the door that read SLEAZY J’S TRASH REMOVAL SERVICE: Your Trash is Our Treasure. Mabel scrunched her face up, “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Wendy replied. She pointed up at the sign, “All evil-villains make dumb jokes like that. Sleazy J for Jarax and a trash removal service because he gets paid to hunt down and remove fugitives.” She tapped her finger on the window. “Also there’s a really suspicious blue light coming from inside.” Mabel pressed her face against the glass, catching the faint glow through the dust windows. “So unless they have magic trash here, I’d say that’s Dipper.”

Mabel nodded and pulled away from the window. “But how to we get in without causing a scene?”

“I’m just gonna knock. Maybe this guy isn’t home?”

“Soos!” Mabel whispered. He rapped his knuckles twice against the wooden door, inviting it to swing up with a weak creak. “Huh. Guess he left the door open.”

Mabel let her breath out, grabbing her baseball bat and creeping towards the door. She pressed her back against the frame. “Follow my lead.” She snuck through the door, into the dark light of the room. Dirt flecked into her lungs as the soft pulse of a dying light beat against her eyes. The sound of Soos and Wendy’s footsteps followed behind her.

“Mabel!” She snapped her head around to find Dipper, chained to a back wall by his hands and feet, tugging against his restraints. “Mabel!” he cried.

“Dipper!” The bat clattered out of her fingers as she rushed for him, pressing her hands up against cheeks. “Dipper, it’s okay! We’re here, we’ll get you out.”

He lowered his face to hers, dark eyes empty and unfamiliar. “Mabel! Please, get me out!” When he spoke no breath escaped his lips. He never looked directly at her.

“I will! Just hold still. Let me see the chains.” She dropped to her knees, fingers fiddling around the metal clamps at his wrists. She pried a bobby pin out of her hair and jammed it into the lock.

“Wait! Don’t!” Wendy gripped Mabel by the back of her sweater and pulled her away from Dipper. Soos wrapped one arm around Mabel’s middle, holding her back.

Mabel struggled between them, trying to use one hand to push Soos away and the other to remove Wendy’s iron grip from her clothing. “What are you doing? We found him! We need to get out!”

Dipper cried again, still tugging at the restraints like a helpless animal. “Mabel! Mabel! Please, get me out!” The color of his skin in the pale blue light was remarkably white, almost like snow.

Wendy moved her hand away from Mabel, moving it towards the axe on her hip. “That’s not Dipper.”

“What do you mean. Of course it is,” Mabel panted, keeping an all-too-careful watch on Wendy’s hand.

“He didn’t greet us,” she whispered, unclipping the axe from its holster. “He hasn’t said anything to Soos or me. This isn’t Dipper.”

“Dude always says hi to me,” Soos concurred. “Like _always_.”

Mabel looked away in horror as Wendy raised the axe and slashed it through Dipper’s abdomen. Thick red blood and scraps of flesh scattered across the air, leaving a putrid and rank smell too the air. There was no sound after that. Mabel opened her eyes to see the corpse of a strange and unfamiliar being, something so shriveled with loose hanging skin and a beak like a bird. It was all a trap.

Soos let her go and helped steady her to her feet. “It wasn’t him,” Mabel whispered to herself. How could she not know? He was her twin, she should have immediately known it wasn’t him. This Jarax guy was good. He knew exactly what would distract her.

Wendy twirled the axe in her fingers. “It looks like Jarax was expecting you,” she replied, turning her head towards a closed off door. “But he didn’t plan for me and Soos coming along.” Wendy looked back at Mabel, still staring down at the shriveled corpse of the creature. She gave Mabel a gentle pat on the shoulder, urging her to move forward. “Let’s use this to our advantage while we still can.”

“I have a plan,” Mabel offered, drawing them in close.

 

\-----

 

The floor was slick with dust as Mabel slipped into the basement. The air was thick inside her lungs, fresh with mold and demon blood. She didn’t know where to look in the room, at the man in all black sitting casually in a chair-- as if enjoying a leisurely weekend, or the Mandobices that skittered and shrieked at his feet, or the heavy pulse of a binding circle with Dipper peering up from inside. He did not look good, wings drooping and his shoulders hung low. He pressed one hand against the barrier of the circle, waiting for her.

“Mabel, what a surprise,” Jarax said. “I wasn’t expecting you to make it past my Moculous.”

“I told you she would come,” Dipper replied, an anxious smile wrapping around his teeth.

Jarax pushed himself off his chair, scooting the Mandobices out of his way. “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting you to make it.”

Mabel’s knuckles turned white where she gripped the baseball bat, gold sparks already spitting their way out of the nails. “I know you want to play evil super villain, but can we just cut to the part where we beat each other up?”

Jarax chuckled. “If you say so.  I’ll try to go easy on you. The purists would be interested in having you too, you’d make a nice little snack for later--” he didn’t get to finish his sentence because Mabel had already sent a waft of golden fire at him.

“Less talk, more fighting!” she yelled, running towards the binding circle.

Jarax sneered, ducking out of the way of her attack. “Get her!” he yelled to the Mandobices. They turned to her, mouths turned spreading open, revealing the rows of little teeth lining their gullets. She bashed a few back with the baseball bat, sparks of fire shooting out with every blow. They were just as gruesome and scary as she remembered, but it phased her less this time.

The Mandobices rose up on their hind legs, gathering themselves into a cluster and backing Mabel up into  a wall. Or more so, she lead them there, with their backs exposed to the real threat coming down the stairs. “Team Alcor! Now!” She shouted. She bashed the bat into the closest demons before ducking out of the way for Wendy and Soos to spring into action. Wendy threw her axe across the room, making a clear path for Mabel to break for the binding circle. Soos, mostly unaware of what to do but aware that he should at least do something, launched himself at Jarax, in an attempt to pin him down.

Mabel darted for the binding circle, pressing her hands up against the outside as if it were a glass wall between them. Dipper pressed his hands up near hers. “Team Alcor?” he asked, voice muffled as if heard from underwater.

“We’re trying to be charming. Now how do I break you out of this thing?” The fight raged on behind her, Wendy having reclaimed her axe and Soos getting knocked around by Jarax.

“There’s a piece of paper with the circle on it. Get that and destroy it.”  

Mabel dropped to the ground, fumbling around for the paper with the sounds of violence ringing in her ears. Behind her she could hear Soos get slammed into a table, Wendy fighting to come to his rescue and keep the demons at bay. Mabel’s fingers twitched around the curl of paper, a soft blue light echoing from it. She grabbed it in her hand and focused, if anyone could break the binding circle it was her. Her own golden fire consumed the paper, charring it away into nothing. The moment it broke, the barrier collapsed around Dipper, knocking him down against her.

“Are you okay?” she asked, helping him regain his stamina.

He straightened his back and looked out at the fight before him. “I’m ok-- Look out!” He pushed her to the side, barely a second between her falling away and a pellet arching into his shoulder. He winced and pressed his hand up to the wound, smoking and streaming with gold blood. Bullets blessed with holy water. As he breathed the red eye hung around his neck seemed to pulse against his chest.

Mabel jerked her head around to see Jarax aiming his gun with one unsteady hand, the other one trying to keep Soos back. “I promised Metus I’d have you alive, Dreambender. But I’m sure he won’t mind if I hand you over dead!” He pushed Soos to the ground and then turned to grab Wendy around the waist, pinning her arms down and causing her to drop the axe. “I’ll kill Wanda and Zeus too if that’s what it takes… Are those your names? I never paid that much attention to you guys.”

“You need to get the god’s eye from him,” Dipper wheezed to Mabel.

“The what?”

“The thing around his neck. You get that, I’ll take care of these demons.”

“But you’re hurt.”

“Just do it!” he shouted. Shadows curled out from underneath tables and around corners, even her own shadow slithered away from her feet, ushering back some of the Mandobices.

She did as he instructed, running towards Jarax at full speed. The Mandobices howled at her, trying to reach up high enough to devour her, but she ignored them. Instead she launched herself onto Jarax, splitting up him and Wendy, and trying to pry at the god’s eye hanging from the chain around his neck. He roared in anger, gripping to Mabel’s shoulders. “You little brat!”

Soos hurled himself over to the base of Jarax’s feet, giving just enough time for Wendy to knock herself into Jarax. They all tumbled to the ground, the god’s eye slipping over Jarax’s head.

Mabel knocked into the ground skull first, the eye still tight in her palm. She tried to crawl away only to find a pair of hands wrapping around her midsection and dragging her back. “How dare you!” Jarax screeched. Over her head, Mabel could see Dipper trying to round the Mandobices into a corner, his flames whipping at them in small but powerful arches. If she held onto the god’s eye any longer, Jarax would certainly take it back.

So she did the only thing she could think to do.

“Dipper!” she shouted, holding the god’s eye into the air. He looked over, completely forgetting the other demons, prepared to follow her instruction. “Mystery Food!” She threw it across the room, the light winking off of it. Dipper snatched it out of the air. And without hesitation, he swallowed the god’s eye whole.

Jarax froze, suddenly wide eyed. “Did you just-- no! No!”

Dipper shuddered, the Mandobices breaking free from his shadows and inching closer. “Oh man, this thing makes me feel nauseous. I shouldn’t have done that.” He doubled over clutching to his stomach.

Mabel turned around and delivered a good kick to Jarax’s face before skittering to her feet and over to Dipper. “Let’s get out of here guys,” he said, trying to contain his nausea. Mabel wrapped his arm around her shoulders, letting him lean against her with each step. Wendy and Soos slung up beside them, moving to an open space in the room.

“What about Jarax?” Soos asked, looking over at the incapacitated bounty hunter.

“Without the god’s eye the Mandobices will take care of him,” Dipper said. “Now let’s go.” Mabel nodded, a gold and blue circle lighting up beneath their feet as they teleported home.

 

\-----

 

Dipper dropped the god’s eye on the kitchen table next to the glasses of water, ibuprofen, and extra strength bandages. The red iris pierced into the gaze of everyone who looked at it. “No more playing Mystery Food, like ever again. The misery I went through to get that was not something I want to repeat.”  

He looked absolutely terrible with pale skin, tired eyes, the wound on his shoulder still healing over. But yet again, no one at the table looked great. Soos has a large bruise on his forehead while Wendy was covered in scratches and green demon blood. Mabel took a beating to her shoulders and back, barely able to keep herself upright.

She brushed the sweaty hair from her eyes. She leaned over it, reaching out with one hand before drawing back hesitantly. “S this thing can really block your omniscience?”

Dipper pulled up a chair opposite them and physically sat down in it (a rare occurrence). “Just being near it seems to have similar effects, you guys are all really blurry and unclear to me. Like I have a migraine, or you know, maybe that’s just because I threw up some ancient being’s eyeball. We’ll see how I feel in a few hours. But yes, if you make contact with it, no demon can see you. You completely disappear. The issue is  we only have the one, sharing would be hard.”

“Do you think Ford might be able to recreate something like this?” Wendy asked.

“I don’t think it’s possible. This is literally the eye of a dead god. My best guess is that if it could be replicated, everyone would have one.”

“Then let’s just get more,” Soos offered. He laughed to himself. “I mean, what kind of ultra-powerful being would have only one eye?”

Everyone gave the same blank stare at Soos before moving on with the conversation. “There’s a couple problems with that,” Dipper continued. “Starting with the fact that I can’t see them. If there are more, I don’t know where they are or who has them. And besides, even if we did have enough, you’d hide from all demons including me. If there were to be some kind of emergency where you couldn’t summon me, I would have no way of knowing.”

“So what do we do with the one we do have?” Mabel asked.

Dipper sighed and leaned back in his chair and looked to Mabel. “I think you should wear it. A demon would do anything to get their hands on you in order to find me. This way we can protect each other. As long as you wear the god’s eye and I stay nearby you, we should be safe for a little while.” He looked up at her with hard set gold and black eyes, “But if you ever get into any danger and I’m not nearby, you need to rip that thing off immediately so I can come save you. I don’t care if the demons are trying to get to me, you have to take it off.” He pushed it across the table to her, the eye seeming to fade into a deeper and deeper red.

She leaned away from it, “Uhh okay.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“Well you did just kind of puke that thing up.”

He rolled his eyes, “Oh, so you’ve been feeding me old sponges and torn up car tires all day but now you’re grossed out?”

“Well, nothing’s ever made a reappearance before. It’s like some nasty magic trick.”

“It’s not nasty! My body doesn’t even work like a human’s anymore!” Wendy and Soos snickered at him, faces turning red. “It’s not funny, this is serious!”

Pressing one hand to her mouth, Mabel stifled a snort. “It is pretty funny, Dip.”

“We aren’t your team if we don’t make fun of you,” Wendy replied.

He relented. They were his team, weren’t they? He had to find comfort in the fact that they would be at his side when he needed them. And what else was a team supposed to do? “I guess you’re right. After all, that was a great team rescue.”

“It was awesome!” Soos yelled. “Just like TV except even more deadly! My life flashed before my eyes like 6 times!”

“Yeah, seriously, I can’t believe you’ve been keeping us out of the fun,” Wendy added.

Mabel looked at Dipper and shrugged. “I think we can make space in future mystery hunts for a few more. Honestly, I wouldn’t have found you if Wendy and Soos hadn’t come along.”

Dipper smiled back. It would be just like old times. Just like their first summer in Gravity Falls. “I couldn’t think of a better team to have because we’ve got some pretty big mysteries to uncover.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter of the fic so far, 15 pages single spaced (I am so sorry). Honestly, I think I had the most fun writing this because how what we learn in the beginning of the chapter is the solution at the end. We cycle back to some other chapters in the fic, and bring in a lot of new plots an information. But I also had a lot of fun integrating the silly stuff in with the more serious; Mystery Food is something Mabel would totally create just to mess with Dipper. 
> 
> However I'm so excited to get the ball rolling on a few other things.  
> 1.) Team Alcor is finally underway, and it will be getting much bigger as time goes on. I'm starting think we could use to see a few TAU specific characters in this story...  
> 2.) some history into the world of demons and the underground of Gravity Falls-- especially for all of you who keep wanting to bring Bill up in the comments (yes, I love him too but please be patient!)  
> 3.) Bringing in the god's eye-- this is an object of my own creation and I knew I wanted it to come in from the start. I wanted to introduce Jarax in A Possession Situation, but that didn't seem right. The hard thing about writing an omniscient character is how do you create conflict for them? I wanted to establish there are people who can hide from Dipper and now Mabel is one of those people. While this does give her a certain level of protection and freedom, it's also a big responsibility. 
> 
> Anyway, I notice I'm writing these faster than the TAU blog can keep up with, so maybe I should take a short break.


	12. Joyride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2 years 1 month~ post Trascendence
> 
> Mabel starts taking driving lessons from Stan, but becomes too nervous to get behind the wheel. Dipper's plan to help her gain confidence backfires.

“What’s Dipper doing here?” Mabel eyed her brother through the rearview mirror.

He lounged in the back seat of the STNLYMBL, no seat belt on, playing with an old handheld gaming device he got off of one of his summoners, a kid who probably shouldn’t have been summoning demons in the first place, in exchange for revenge on a middle school bully. (After the kidnapping incident, Dipper hesitantly agreed to take more summonings. “I still don’t like it,” he said. “These people still try to take my picture or scream when they see me. I only agreed to meet the kid because he was too afraid to do anything like that to me.”)

Dipper shrugged, not looking up from the game. “Grunkle Stan is offering me the movie night pick in exchange for being ‘accident control’.”

Mabel turned and gasped at Stan, who was sitting in the passenger seat of the car. “You of little faith!”

Stan leaned back in the seat. “Listen, sweetie. I have faith… er some faith in you. But learning to drive isn’t easy. I just want to make sure you’ll be safe, and well, Dipper is just a last resort.”

“Alright,” Mabel said, gripping to the steering wheel.

Turning 15 meant it was time for Mabel to start taking learning how to drive with her learner’s permit. Stan took it upon himself to teach her right away. He went on and on about how it was an important life skill (right behind breaking out of handcuffs and conning tourists). (But in reality, Stan was just excited to do something that a parent would normally do for their child. He would never say it out loud, but he liked taking care of the twins.)

“Have you checked your mirrors?” Stan asked.

Mabel popped the rearview mirror into place, removing Dipper from the frame. “Check.”

“Okay, then I want you to put your foot on the break and put the car in reverse.” She did. “Now, using your mirrors gently put your foot on the gas and back out.” Mabel did that too, except instead of gently hitting the gas. The car lurched backwards, causing her and Stan to jerk back in their seats.

Stan turned around to see Soos’s truck pulling up behind them. “Mabel, hit the breaks!” But like most new drivers, using her rearview mirrors and handling the wheel at the same time was not an easy task.

Dipper flipped himself upright in the backseat, holding up both hands, encapsulating the car in a heavy blue light, stopping it in its tracks. Mabel took a deep breath, taking her foot off the gas and hands off the steering wheel. She looked over at him, wide brown eyes in shock. Dipper lowered his hands, releasing the car and turning the engine off.

Soos lowered his window, “Heh- cool trick, Dipper. Can you do my car next? Do you think you can make it like fly around or something?”

 

\------

 

Mabel paced across the bedroom for the 108th time. “I could have crashed today!” She bit down on her sparkly blue nails, chewing them down to the bed.

“Well you didn’t,” Dipper relied, watching her turn to take her 109th stride.

“Only because you were there! And let’s say you weren’t! I would have rammed right into Soos!”

“The only real damage would have been to Stan’s car, which wouldn’t be a shame. That thing is falling apart already. And you’ll do much better next time.”

Her pacing ceased, an erratic look to her eyes. “Next time? Oh no, there won’t be a next time. There is no way you are getting behind the wheel of a car ever again.”

“You will,” he replied. “Sure, it’s a little scary at first, but you’ll be a great driver in no time!”

“A little scary! I could have hit Soos!”

“Hey-hey, he’s okay. He’s not even consciously aware that you could have hit him. Driving will be easier the more you do it.”

“What do you even know about driving?” she spat. “You’ve never driven a car. You can’t legally take the test! You don’t even exist.” She looked over at him, the expressionless hole in his eyes. “Wait, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“I know you didn’t,” he muttered (that didn’t mean her words didn’t hurt). “It’s okay. You’re just scared.”

She huffed out a sigh. The silence chewed between the twins. Mabel tugged at the string that held the god’s eye around her neck, turning to Dipper with a wide-eyed, mischievous grin.

“Oh no, that’s your idea face,” he said. Ever since Mabel started wearing the god’s eye, he could never tell what she was thinking anymore. Just that she was on the brink of trouble.

“Can you make me less scared? Like get inside my head and work your brain magic?”

“Uhm well, I don’t know if brain magic is the right choice here.” He thought back to one of his earlier meetings with the old woman with the turtle skull for a head, how she lectured him about not being afraid of himself and embracing his own failures. Not to mention he was worried about permanently altering her brain chemistry. “I think you need to conquer your fear on your own. And that means getting back in the car and driving, just a few circles around the Shack.”

“Come on, work your dream business on me, get inside my head, alter my brain! I’ll trade anything. Anything! Just help me!” she pleaded.

He resisted the primal urge to take that offer seriously. “Nope.”

“Dipper! Please?” She blinked her big brown eyes at him. “Pleeeeeaaaaaassssseeee.”

He rolled his eyes as her please continued to elongate. “Fine. I think I may know of something that can help.”

She latched her arms around him in a hug, even though he wasn’t completely material and her arms went right through him. “Yes. Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She would have squeezed the life out of him if he could.

“Alright,” he hovered out of her way. “But I’ll need something in return.”

“I’ve got some candy bars?”

He shook his head, “Nope. Go bigger.” Candy bars were fine for a casual summoning, or or a simple job around the house. But this was different. It was a big deal, as in it was a deal he really didn’t want to make. The price was high; to perform such a task would drain so much of his energy. Emotional spells required more human emotion. “I need… a memory.”

“A memory? Like the things inside my brain,” she asked.

“Yes. A memory of a time in which you felt brave. A good memory.”

She bit down on her nails again, another flake of nail polish coming off. “I won’t ever get this memory back… will I?”

“No,” the word slithered through his teeth.

She thought about it for a moment. Not like it would be easy, to give away an integral part of your consciousness. To give away something that is distinctly your own. “Then… I want to give you the memory of when Mom and Dad took us to the pool and I finally jumped off the high dive.” She held out one hand to him. “Deal?”

“Deal,” he shook her hand, instantaneously re-entering the physical plane, the pulse of fire blooming between them. “No hold that memory in your mind.”

She closed her eyes and held the sensation of standing at the top of the high dive, the sinking of her stomach in her mind. The sound of her dad calling her name. The image of the blue water was still crisp in her mind. Anticipation rattled through her chest. The feeling of her feet…

She couldn’t remember what she was thinking about.

She opened her eyes.

Dipper held a translucent something in his hands, blue and crisp liquid sloshing around inside. When she looked at it, it made her feel good. “Did it work? I don’t think I was thinking about anything.”

“You were,” he said. He took the something and flattened it between his palms. He gripped it by the edges, twisting and pulling at its edges. It folded like origami paper but squished like clay. It took a new shape, stretching itself out into a tiny glass bottle of liquid. “There. That should do it.”

“Cool.” She blinked. “What is it?”

He held it up to the light, examining it. “This is liquified courage. Taking it will override your other emotions, and since it’s made from made from your memory it will only work on you.” He handed the bottle to her. It fit in the palm of her hand. “One drop should give you the confidence to get back in the car.”

“Woah…” It rolled around in her hand, the light winking off the glass.

“Mabel, I’ve got to warn you that,” he caught her popping the cork off, preparing to chug. “Mabel!”

“Huh?” She held the bottle meer centimeters (4) from her lips.

He groaned, “Seriously! You shouldn’t take more than a drop. This stuff can give you courage but it also inhibits good judgement.”

“Oh.” She lowered the bottle.

“So next time Stan wants to take you out for driving lessons, put a drop of that on your tongue. No more, okay? Promise you won’t take more than a drop.”

She held up one hand, “I promise.” She looked back at the tiny bottle in her hand, rolling it between her fingers. “Wait! If all you need is memories to make this stuff, why haven’t you made one for yourself?”

“What?”

“Aww come on, don’t play dumb with me. You’re a big scaredy-demon! You’re always going on about how scared you are that your powers will hurt people, or about eternity or whatever. Just make yourself a bottle of liquid courage.”

“I’m not--” he paused. No use in lying to her. He rubbed at his arm, feeling a chill run through his body. “It wouldn’t work. I can’t take my own memories out of my head, and besides, it would take way more than a drop to alter my thinking, nor would inhibiting my judgement be a good idea. It’s best I just leave it alone.”

“If you say so… Hey! Can you make this feel-juice with other emotions? Could I drink some and then feel angry or sad?” She gasped, “Could I take some of a memory of drinking Mabel Juice and then have intensified Mabel Juice?”

Dipper chuckled to himself, “I think we should stick with the courage. Come on, let’s go down to the gift shop before your shift starts.”

 

\------

The next day, Stan and Mabel got out of the car, followed behind by Dipper. Stan slapped a hand on Mabel’s shoulder, “You did much better today, pumpkin! You were so much more confident behind the wheel.” Mabel looked at Dipper out of the corner of her eye. He winked at her.

She’d slipped a drop of liquid courage onto her tongue that morning. Her mouth rushed with the taste of chlorine and a jolt of lightning broke through her skull. It made her feel fantastic, like she could conquer the world if she wanted to. Nothing, not even car rides or claymation, could be scary to her. The confidence and focus made her drive like a champ (she drove in circles around the Mystery Shack) (but she still felt good about it).

“And I didn’t even come close to hitting Soos!” she replied, striking a power pose.

Soos waved from the back of the Shack, wearing a vest the color of an orange traffic cone. “I’m a pedestrian!”

“Alright, kid. Don’t get too confident. You’re still starting out. Tomorrow we’ll practice on some back roads.” He ruffled her hair and walked back into the Shack.

Mabel turned to Dipper and squealed, “I feel so good! This memory juice is amazing! Let’s go on a mystery hunt! No! Let’s fight a cult!” She gripped him by the shoulders and pulled him in. “Let’s fight a bear!”

He eased himself out of her grip. “Easy, Mabel. You’re getting too excited. You feel good now but that liquid courage will wear off in a little bit.”

“Really?” She frowned, “But I like it.”

“It can’t last forever. You take it before you go driving with Stan until your confidence builds up naturally. Then you won’t need it anymore.”

“How could I not need it? It’s like Smile Dip without the hallucinations!”

“Mabel,” he chided. “Remember that this stuff is made out of your own memory. You were already courageous. This is just a little reminder for when you need it.”

“Fine,” she grumbled.

“Promise?” he urged.

“Promise.” She crossed her fingers behind her back.

 

\------

 

That night, Mabel crept beside Dipper as he laid asleep, hovering about 2 feet over his bed. “Dipper, wake up.”

Dipper jerked awake, flames sparking at his fingers. He wasn’t used to people having the ability to sneak up on him, let alone when he was sleeping. Sucking in a breath he looked over at his sister, grinning in the dark overcast of night. “Mabel? It’s 3:17 in the morning, what are you doing?”

Her pupils looked very big, like big black disks in his brown irses. “Let’s go on an adventure.” She tried to grab at his arm, but she phased through his immaterial body. “You need an offering. I’ll get you an offering. Hey-- if I give you a couple liters of blood how long would that last? What about my appendix! I don’t need my appendix. I can cut it out if you want. I’m confident I’ll be fine.” She spoke remarkably fast, as if running entirely on sugar and energy drinks.

Dipper looked behind her, an empty bottle of liquid courage abandoned on the floor. “Mabel, did you drink all of that?”

“Well I took a drop, you know, just to keep the hype going. Like, the more of this I have the more memories I have to make more liquid courage. And then you know after that I was like, ‘what could possibly go wrong? I’m confident that I could take this whole bottle and nothing bad will happen’. And so I did.” She blinked, the rise and fall of her breath heavy in her chest. “Wanna take Stan’s car out on a joyride?”

“What? No! I thought you promised not to drink the whole bottle.”

“I had the confidence to lie.”

Dipper groaned, “Okay. I know you feel like you’re on top of the world right now but you need to do as I say--”

“Pfft! Nah dawg, I’m perfectly fine on my own. With this feel-juice, I’m unstoppable. Not to mention the fact that who’s always swooping into to save your butt,” she pointed at herself, “this girl! I’ve got it all figured out and you know nothing. If anything you should be listening to me.”

“MABEL!” he shouted, turning on his scary-demon voice. “YOUR JUDGEMENT IS BEING INHIBITED YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO ME.” She stopped momentarily, as if confused at the outburst. The liquid courage had even worse effects that he had expected. Not only was Mabel over confident in herself, any filter she had or sense of consequence had completely disappeared. (Just ignore the fact that she’s right.) (You really don’t know anything.)He took a deep breath, “Let’s just stay inside the Shack until this wears off okay?”

She pursed her lips,  crossing her arms in distaste. She turned away from him, refusing to meet his gaze. “I don’t have to do anything you tell me to do,” and then she paused, a grin tearing into her mouth. “And you can’t stop me… can you?”

“Mabel no!” He flew over in front of her, trying to make her listen, but she walked straight through him, a feeling of static where their bodies meet. She bounded down the stairs hoping over and maneuvering around the boards that squeaked or creaked too loud (she had clearly snuck out before). Swiping Stan’s keys off of the table by the door, she slipped her shoes on. Dipper followed in close pursuit. “Mabel, please come back!” She walked out the door.

Popping into the front seat of the car, she turned on the engine and buckled herself in. “I don’t see why you’re so worried. I’m a great driver.”

“You’ve been driving for 2 days!”  he said. He slid up alongside her in the car.

“Longer than you,” she smirked, pressing her foot onto the gas. The car shot off down the dirt road. Dust flew up around the tires as the STNLYMBL rattled over the bumps in the road and over rocks. Mabel rolled down the windows and slammed her foot onto the gas. “Woo-hoo!”  The wheel jerked in her hands, unable to keep a steady course. The wind whipped her hair around, and had this not been a highly dangerous situation, Dipper would have thought she looked like she belonged in a commercial.

“Mabel, slow down!” Dipper shouted, watching the dim glow of the town pull into view.

She looked over at him. “No way! This is great!” The car bumped a little too hard against a divet in the dirt, the wheel spinning around in Mabel’s hands. She gripped to it, trying to steer the car back in the right direction. “It’s okay! I got this!” Her voice wavered. She jerked the car away from the tree line, still sending it spiralling at 120 mph towards the town square. (Much too fast.) (She won’t slow down in time.) (She’ll crash through the post office, then the barbershop, coming to a halt in the front door of the library.) Mabel looked down where the dirt road turned into concrete, “Uhh okay! I’ll just stop!” She slammed her foot on the gas, but instead of stopping the car, it spun around on its front wheels. (Now you’ll hit the supermarket. Good news is that you’ll crash into baked goods for a softer, sweeter impact.) (She’ll sustain several injuries.) She hit the gas again, trying to regain control.

Dipper groaned and pulled himself into her line of vision. “Mabel! I know your brain isn’t working right, and that you don’t want to admit you were wrong.”

“I’m not wrong, this is just way more fun!”

“We are going to crash! So please, use the liquid courage for the right thing and admit you are in trouble.” He looked over his shoulder as the car hopped a curb and skidded along the sidewalk. “Just make a deal with me! Now!”

She gripped her hands to the steering wheel, watching as the big glass windows of the supermarket loomed closer. She let go of the wheel and took her foot off the pedal, letting the car spiral where it pleased. “Fine!”

Dipper grabbed her hand, pulling himself into the physical plane before surrounding the car in a blue light, lifting it up off the ground as the tires spun themselves out. He looked at Mabel, the uncertain expression on her face, and let his breath go. He shut off the engine and lowered the car back onto the street. Sitting down into the passenger seat next to her, he threw his head back against the headrest in relief. “That was a close one. It could have been so much worse.” The wail of a siren and the flash of blue and red lights filled the air. He and Mabel both turned to look out the rearview mirror. “Now it’s worse.”

 

\-----

“Driving without a licensed driver in the passenger seat. Going over the speed limit. Driving under the influence of magic. Car theft.” Sheriff Blubs checked each item off onto a list. He looked up at Mabel and scoffed, “You are in a lot of trouble, little girl. This is going to be one hefty fine.”

Mabel put her head between her knees, sitting on the side of the road. The effects of the liquid courage slowly evacuated her system (or more so, Dipper rooted around in her brain to reverse it). “Oh no. Stan is gonna kill me.” The red and blue light reflected off of her pallid skin.

Dipper bit down on his lip. It was wrong to say he wasn’t a little angry at Mabel; ignoring his instructions, insulting him almost all night, getting pulled over by the cops. But he wasn’t angry enough to leave her at the mercy of Gravity Falls’ random and illogical justice system. He sighed and turned to Sheriff Blubs. “Come on. Isn’t there anything I can do to cover Mabel’s debt? Literally anything.”

The Sheriff laughed and ripped the ticket out of his book. “Sorry, but I don’t deal with demons.”

“Seriously, Blubs. It’s me. You can trust me on this one. I can… I can repave the roads in town. Or I can stock the station with an infinite supply of jelly donuts.” He wracked his omniscience for another option, landing on one that seemed pretty potent. “I can send you and Durland on that dream honeymoon you didn’t get to have.”

Blubs lowered his glasses. “Dream honeymoon?”

“The one with the waterpark and the swimming pool filled with slushies? Yes. All for the simple price of pretending like none of this ever happened.”

He rubbed at his chin. “Well… alright. You two are free to go. But just this once. I don’t want you thinking you can get away with everything just because you’ve got these magic powers.” They shook on it.

Dipper walked over back to Mabel, sitting down beside her. “Whelp, now I have to plan the world’s most awkward honeymoon.”

She looked up at him, hair hanging over her face. “Thanks for covering for me. I’m sorry I’ve been such a butt to you. All the self-confidence went to my head. I guess I do need you as much as you need me.”

“Ahh, I know you don’t really mean it. We’re a team. And besides, the worst is about to come in 3… 2...1…”

“What were you thinking! Do you know how it feels to wake up at 4 am to the police at your door, saying your niece and nephew were caught taking your car for a joy ride.” Stan slammed the passenger side door of Durland’s police car, as he greeted a very giddy Sheriff Blubs. “I thought they were there for me! I was about to book it into the forest!” He marched up to the twins, still in his underwear and robe. “Now tell me what happened.”

“Well…” Dipper turned a very deep shade of red.

Mabel cut him off. “After I almost hit Soos with the car, I got really nervous so Dipper gave me some magic memory juice to give me some courage. But then I ignored his instructions and took too much of it. It got me all hyped up and decided to take the car out for a joyride. It’s not Dipper’s fault. He was just trying to be ‘accident control’. This one is on me.”

“Mabel don’t--” he started.

“Can it, kid!” Stan turned to him, pointing one finger and yelling at the top of his lungs. “I don’t care how powerful you think you are. The moment Mabel tried to leave the house you should have woken me or Ford up, nor should you have given her that magic potion in the first place.” He turned to Mabel. “And you, not only are you an inexperienced driver but intentionally misusing a magic potion is wildly irresponsible. You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“Sorry, Grunkle Stan,” they muttered in unison.

“Sorry ain’t gonna cover it. Both of you are grounded. No more TV for a week.”

Dipper nodded, “Yeah, I think we deserve that.”

“You deserve a lot worse.” He gripped them both by the collar and pushed them towards the car. “Now get in the car, I’ll go talk to the cops.”

Dipper spoke under his breath, “Actually, I already took care of it. All is forgotten in the eyes of the law.”

Stan paused, “You did?”

He nodded. “I’m a demon. Making deals is kind of what I do.”

“Huh… You’re still not off the hook.”

 

\-----

 

Stan placed the plate of tacos on the summoning circle in the middle of the kitchen (Mabel and Ford spent a weekend etching them onto the floor of almost every room in the house to make summonings easier on everyone: one in the kitchen, living room, the twins’ bedroom, and the front porch.) “Alright, ya menace. Come out!”

“What’s up,” Dipper said from inside the circle, already devouring the first taco. “Is this about the Mabel and the car. Listen, I know I should have.”

“I don’t wanna hear it.”

Dipper picked up the second taco, stopping speak before completely swallowing it. “Then what did you summon me for?”

Stan nodded his head towards the door, “”Get in the car.”

“Huh?”

“I said get in the car!” Dipper paused, unsure of his next move, but followed Stan outside to the car. He floated over towards the passenger side. “Nope, driver’s seat,” Stan said.

He blinked a few times. “Uhm. What?”

Stan sat himself in the passenger side. “I’m teaching you how to drive.”

“Okay, thanks but 1.) I already know how to drive 2.) I don’t need to drive, I can teleport 3.) I can’t get a driver’s license anyway… just one of the many things I can’t do.” He sighed, not getting in the car and not looking up at Stan.

Stan reached over, and placed his hand on Dipper’s shoulder. “Look, I know you’ve had a really hard summer with all this demon business and watching Mabel learn to drive and do all you the things you want to do. You probably feel a little left out.”

Dipper rubbed at his forearm and looked away. “Yeah but… what would be the point? None of this really matters.”

“‘Course it does. Demon or not you’re still 15. 15 year olds learn how to drive. Who's going to stop you?”  

Dipper kept his eyes focused on the window. He pursed his lips and and nodded in compliance. He opened up the door and sat inside. It felt odd, to actually do something like any other normal person would. Not hover, but have to adjust the seat, to make sure his feet were firmly planted, to fold his wings tight against his back so he could lean against the seat. 

“Good,” Stan said. “Now just because you know how to drive, doesn’t mean you can. This isn’t some information you can just pop right into your head. You have actually do it.”

Dipper placed both his hands on the wheel. He turned to Stan and smiled, “Then let’s do it.”

 

\-------

They entered back through the gift shop, a smug high-cheeked look on his face. Stan scratched at his head. “Ok, well I guess you do know how to drive.”

Dipper grinned with all his teeth. “Told you! I was driving the golf cart at 12! I even piloted the Shacktron. Now there’s just roads and stuff involved-- also it helps a little if you can recognize traffic patterns, stop lights, and pedestrian crossings before they happen.”

“Alright. Don’t get a bigger head than you’ve already got.” He reached out and tousled Dipper’s hair.

Stan walked towards the EMPLOYEES ONLY door, just pushing his way through when Dipper sprang up behind him in a hug. “Thanks. It’s nice for someone to treat me like any other 15-year-old.”

Spinning around in the hug, Stan gave Dipper a back on the back, right in between where his wings pulled from his back. “Yeah well, I don’t find the wings and claws to be impressive. I know what a big loser you are underneath.” Dipper looked up at him, with dark eyes that definitely seemed a little bigger--more puppy-dog like. “Ahh, you see, I never had kids of my own. And I like taking care of you. The one good thing this Transcendence thing got me was having you two live here.” He leaned down and whispered, “Don’t tell your sister I said that. She’ll go nuts.”

Dipper released Stan from the hug. “I won’t.”

He pushed Dipper into the living room. “Now go do chores or something. You’re still grounded.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I see a lot of my current life in this piece. My sister recently got her driver’s license and has been driving my car around town. I’m very nervous. And I just had a long bonding moment with my dad, as he helped me move out of school and back home. But fic is just using encyclopedic knowledge to make sense of our own realities. 
> 
> However, I had this chapter planned like 4 chapters ago. Dipper and Mabel needed a normal life adventure. Something a little more down to earth. Part of the fun of TAU and Gravity Falls in general is how normal life can suddenly be corrupted by the supernatural. But enough of that. I think it’s time to get off earth and into the mindscape. 
> 
> (Also publishing when I said I was on a break is a birthday gift to myself. 23 years yo!)


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